September
2006
The Collectible Moment: Photographs in the Norton Simon
Museum
On view from October 13, 2006 through February 26, 2007
Extended through March 12, 2007
Pasadena, CA—The Norton Simon Museum presents The Collectible
Moment, a first-ever survey
of the Museum’s photography collection, which was assembled by
its predecessor institution the
Pasadena Art Museum. Featuring 145 photographs by 100 artists along
with ephemera from the
Museum archives, The Collectible Moment is the largest and most extensive
photography
exhibition in the Museum’s history. The exhibition opens October
13, 2006 and remains on view
through February 26, 2007. A major publication and a series of public
programs will accompany
the exhibition.
The Collection
During the 1960s and early 1970s the Pasadena Art Museum (PAM) earned
an international
reputation for organizing and presenting critically acclaimed exhibitions
featuring the work of
established and emerging artists. Landmark exhibitions included the
first retrospectives of Robert
Motherwell (1961), Marcel Duchamp (1963), and Andy Warhol (1971). In
1969, with the opening
of its new building on Colorado Boulevard at Orange Grove, PAM distinguished
itself again by
establishing a photography department that advocated the collecting
and exhibiting of
contemporary work rather than an exclusively historical or encyclopedic
collection. In so doing,
PAM stood in the vanguard of a small but determined movement to validate
photography as a
major art form, a medium engaged with issues that were central to contemporary
art.
To oversee this effort, PAM hired Fred R. Parker as coordinator of exhibitions
and acting curator
of prints, drawings, and photography. Over the next five years (1969-1974),
PAM became the
institutional venue for photography in Los Angeles. Audiences were exposed
to dozens of
photography exhibitions, divided between shows organized by the Museum
and traveling
exhibitions from institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and
the Friends of
Photography in Carmel, California.
Parker worked aggressively to increase the Museum’s photography
holdings, which comprised
only forty-eight works in 1969. From Parker’s arrival in the summer
of that year until 1974, when
Norton Simon and a reorganized Board of Trustees assumed stewardship
of the institution, the
collection grew to more than 500 prints. Rather than defining the medium
of photography
narrowly or limiting his acquisitions to canonical works by established
photographers, Parker built
a collection that reflects how artists were changing and expanding the
medium in the late 1960s
and early 1970s: by incorporating techniques such as silkscreen, collage,
and hand-painting into
their work; appropriating unconventional papers or printing on fabric
and other materials; and
experimenting with size. Most of the prints in the collection were donated
by the artists
themselves, or were gifts made by a great patron and advocate of the
medium, Shirley C.
Burden. Such support was timely given the museum’s embrace of
this medium at the beginning
of the “collectible moment” for photography.
The Exhibition
Organized by Norton Simon Museum Curator Gloria Williams Sander, The
Collectible Moment
presents 145 prints culled from the Museum’s collection. Among
those whose work is featured in
the exhibition are Ansel Adams, Lewis Baltz, Thomas Barrow, Manuel Alvarez
Bravo, Imogen
Cunningham, Darryl Curran, Judy Dater, Robert Fichter, Robbert Flick,
Oliver Gagliani, Betty
Hahn, Robert Heinecken, Anthony Hernandez, Kenneth Josephson, Nathan
Lyons, Jerry
McMillan, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Duane Michals, Barbara Morgan, Leland
Rice, Arthur Siegel,
Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Edmund Teske, Jerry Uelsmann, Todd
Walker, Edward
Weston, Minor White, and Don Worth.
The installation will occupy 5,000 square-feet and follow a loose chronological
flow with sections
that explore non-silver and mixed media processes and monographic concentrations.
In addition,
the installation includes three complete photography portfolios and
a selection of ephemera from
the Museum’s archives (letters, brochures, informal photographs)
intended to introduce
audiences to the photography exhibitions organized by PAM.
Catalogue
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated, 344-page catalogue
of the collection. An essay
by Therese Mulligan, Director, School of Photographic Arts and Sciences
Gallery, Rochester
Institute of Technology, examines the scope and significance of this
little-known collection made
up of modernist and nascent post-modernist holdings. Gloria Williams
Sander, Curator of the
Norton Simon Museum, examines the history of the department in the context
of photography’s
breakthrough into the contemporary art world and with attention to the
activities of artists in Los
Angeles in particular. First person recollections by major participants
in the world of photography
include William Wilson, former Los Angeles Times art critic, Peter Bunnell,
Curator Emeritus of
Photography at MOMA and Emeritus Chair of the Art History Department,
Princeton University,
the late Robert Sobieszek, Curator of Photography at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art,
Fred Parker, former Curator of Photography, Pasadena Art Museum, and
artists including
Thomas Barrow, Darryl Curran, Judy Dater, Robert Fichter, Charles Traub,
and Jack Welpott.
The book is published and distributed by Yale University Press and will
be available for sale in the
Norton Simon Museum Store.
Public Programs
As a complement to the exhibition and publication, the Museum is organizing
a series of free
public programs, including lectures, exhibition walkthroughs, adult
education courses, and
activities for children and their families.
Related Exhibitions
Concurrent to The Collectible Moment, the Pasadena Museum of California
Art presents
Advancing The Moment, an exhibition featuring current works by 12 of
the artists in the Norton
Simon Museum photography collection. Artists in that show include Donald
Blumberg, Darryl
Curran, Judy Dater, Robbert Flick, Ingeborg Gerdes, Anthony Hernandez,
Ellen Land-Weber,
Gregory Allen MacGregor, Jerry McMillan, John Spence Weir and Henry
Wessel, Jr. Advancing
The Moment runs October 14, 2006, through January 21, 2007. Visit www.pmcaonline.org
for
more information. Also, the Hammer Museum presents A Fine Experiment:
A Tribute to Robert
Heinecken (September 12 - December 31, 2006). Heinecken (1931-2006),
who is a featured
artist in The Collectible Moment, formed the department of photography
at UCLA, where he had
the foresight to build a resourceful photography collection for his
students at the Grunwald Center
for the Graphic Arts. The Hammer’s exhibition celebrates Heinecken
and his collection of works
by such artist as Walker Evans, Imogen Cunningham, Gary Winogrand, and
Heinecken himself,
and many of his students. Visit www.hammer.ucla.edu for more information.
About the Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is known around the world as one of the most
remarkable private art
collections ever assembled. Over a thirty-year period 20th-century industrialist
Norton Simon
(1907–1993) amassed an astonishing collection of European art
from the Renaissance to the 20th
century and a stellar collection of South and Southeast Asian art spanning
2,000 years. Among
the most celebrated works he collected are Branchini Madonna, 1427,
by Giovanni di Paolo;
Madonna and Child with Book, c. 1502-03, by Raphael; Still Life with
Lemons, Oranges and a
Rose, 1633, by Francisco de Zurbarán; Portrait of a Boy, Presumed
to Be the Artist's Son, Titus,
c. 1645-50, by Rembrandt van Rijn; Mulberry Tree, 1889, by Vincent van
Gogh; Little Dancer
Aged Fourteen, 1878-81, by Edgar Degas; and Woman with a Book, 1932,
by Pablo Picasso.
Highlights from the Asian collection include the bronze sculptures Buddha
Shakyamuni, c. 550,
India: Bihar, Gupta period, and Shiva as King of Dance, c. 1000, India:
Tamil Nadu; and the gilt
bronze Indra, 13th century, Nepal.
In 1974, Norton Simon and a reorganized Board of Trustees assumed control
of the Pasadena
Art Museum, taking up management of its building and incorporating its
important collection of
20th-century European and American art with his own outstanding collection.
Highlights from the
PAM collection include the Galka Scheyer Blue Four Collection, a body
of works by artists Lyonel
Feininger, Paul Klee, Alexei Jawlensky, Vasily Kandinsky and others
assembled by art dealer,
scholar and muse Galka Scheyer; post-war American art, particularly
from Southern California-
based artists including John Altoon, Larry Bell, Wallace Berman, Bruce
Conner, Richard
Diebenkorn, Llyn Foulkes, Sam Francis, George Herms, Robert Irwin, and
Ed Ruscha; and the
aforementioned photography collection.
Approximately 1,000 works from the permanent collection of 12,000 objects
are on view in the
Norton Simon Museum’s galleries and sculpture garden throughout
the year. There are two
temporary exhibition spaces within the Museum; the curatorial and education
departments mount
three to six exhibitions centered on the collection per year. To extend
the impact of these
exhibitions and to explore genres and themes within the permanent collection,
the Museum offers
six to ten free public programs per month, including scholarly lectures
and symposia, adult
education courses, music and dance performances and hands-on activities
for children.
Via Yale University Press, the Museum actively produces scholarly publications
focused on
segments of its collections. Recent editions include The Blue Four Collection
at the Norton Simon
Museum (2002) and the three-volume Asian Art at the Norton Simon Museum
(2003-2004). In
addition to the aforementioned publication, The Collectible Moment,
catalogues on the 19th-
century French and Northern European painting collections are currently
in production.
Location: The Norton Simon Museum is located at 411 West Colorado Blvd.
at Orange Grove
Blvd. in Pasadena, California, at the intersection of the Foothill (210)
and Ventura (134) freeways.
For general Museum information, please call (626) 449-6840 or visit
www.nortonsimon.org.
Hours: The Museum is open every day except Tuesday, from 12:00 p.m.
to 6:00 p.m., and 12:00
p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Friday.
Admission: General admission is $8.00 for adults and $4.00 for seniors.
Members, students with
I.D., and patrons age 18 and under are admitted free of charge. Admission
is free for everyone on
the first Friday of every month from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. All public
programs, unless stated
otherwise, are free. The Museum is wheelchair accessible.
Parking: Parking is free and no reservations are necessary.