2020 - 2029
Exhibition Archive for 2020 - 2029
Raphael 2020
January 15, 2020
– May 18, 2020
This winter and spring, the Norton Simon Museum joins institutions around the world in observing the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death with a special display and a series of programs focused on the artist’s Madonna and Child with Book, from around 1502–3.
Unseen Picasso
September 3, 2021
– January 31, 2022
Unseen Picasso presents a selection of innovative, rarely seen prints created throughout the artist’s prodigious career.
The Expressive Body: Memory, Devotion, Desire (1400–1750)
October 15, 2021
– March 7, 2022
This exhibition explores the ways that images of the human body were used to generate profound physical and emotional responses in viewers throughout the 15th through 18th centuries.
Manet’s Philosophers from the Art Institute of Chicago
November 19, 2021
– February 28, 2022
This special installation reunites three of Manet’s Philosophers for the first time in more than fifty years: The Norton Simon’s Ragpicker, c. 1865–70, and two paintings on loan from the Art Institute, Beggar with Oysters (Philosopher) and Beggar with a Duffle Coat (Philosopher), both dated 1865/67.
Richard Hunt: Details
February 25, 2022
– July 4, 2022
This focus exhibition features a selection of lithographs made by sculptor Richard Hunt during his 1965 residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles.
Alternate Realities: Altoon, Diebenkorn, Lobdell, Woelffer
May 13, 2022
– August 22, 2022
Drawn from the Norton Simon Museum’s expansive holdings of postwar American art, Alternate Realities explores the ways in which artists John Altoon, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell and Emerson Woelffer challenged the limitations of pure, gestural abstraction by exploiting the resonance of figural forms.
John Altoon (American, 1925-1969), Ocean Park Series #8, 1962, oil on canvas, Norton Simon Museum, Anonymous Gift, © 2020 Estate of John Altoon, Braunstein/Quay Gallery
Modernism in Miniature
August 12, 2022
– January 9, 2023
This intimate exhibition presents small-scale works of art by some of the most celebrated artists of the mid-20th century.
Ink, Paper, Stone: Six Women Artists and the Language of Lithography
October 14, 2022
– February 13, 2023
This exhibition examines the prints of six critically acclaimed female artists who visited Los Angeles in the 1960s to explore the art of lithography: Ruth Asawa, Gego, Eleanore Mikus, Louise Nevelson, Irene Siegel and Hedda Sterne.
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face
October 21, 2022
– January 30, 2023
In partnership with the National Gallery, London, this special installation brings together for the first time Pablo Picasso’s dazzling Woman with a Book with the painting that inspired it, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s late, great portrait Madame Moitessier (1856).
Saint Sebastian: Anatomy of a Sculpture
February 10, 2023
– July 3, 2023
Through historical and scientific research, this small exhibition explores the rich life—from its creation to its arrival at the Museum—of a previously unstudied 15th-century Italian painted sculpture of St. Sebastian.
All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food
April 14, 2023
– August 14, 2023
This expansive exhibition explores how artists responded to and shaped food cultures in Europe from 1500 to 1900.
Word as Image
August 11, 2023
– February 5, 2024
Spanning the comical to the political to the conceptual, Word as Image explores how artists challenge viewers to consider language and image anew, by positioning words as an essential part of visual culture.
Benevolent Beings: Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from South and Southeast Asia
October 13, 2023
– February 19, 2024
Explore how buddhas, bodhisattvas and other protective deities have been seen to offer blessings, guidance and security to their devotees.
I Saw It: Francisco de Goya, Printmaker
April 19, 2024
– August 5, 2024
This fascinating exhibition presents Spanish artist Francisco de Goya's four major print series in their entirety: Caprichos (1799), Desastres de la Guerra (c. 1810–15), La Tauromaquia (1815–16) and Los Disparates (c. 1815–23), offering insight into the artist's creative process and the full range of his expressive capacity.
I Saw It: Modern Artists Respond to Goya
April 19, 2024
– August 5, 2024
On view in the Museum’s focus gallery, works by artists Enrique Chagoya, Leon Golub, Pablo Picasso, Yinka Shonibare and Andy Warhol demonstrate these artists’ deep connection with the concerns Goya expressed as a printmaker and even his direct influence on their art making.
Plugged In: Art and Electric Light
September 20, 2024
– February 17, 2025
This illuminating exhibition shines a light on the ways that artists in the mid-20th century engaged with electric light in their artworks.
Look Alive! A Still Life Comparison
September 27, 2024
– January 13, 2025
Explore the practice of slow looking through an intriguing pairing of two still-life paintings: Jacques Linard’s Still Life: The Five Senses with Flowers, 1639, and Tom Wesselmann’s Still Life #2, 1962.
Mariana: Velázquez’s Portrait of a Queen from the Museo Nacional del Prado
December 13, 2024
– March 24, 2025
Exhibited on the West Coast for the very first time, Diego Velázquez’s extraordinary painting Queen Mariana of Austria (1652–53) is on special loan from the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Retrospect: 50 Years at the Norton Simon Museum
February 14, 2025
– January 12, 2026
Through rare photos from the Museum’s archive, Retrospect highlights both significant and lesser-known stories from the Museum’s 50-year history. This small exhibition is held in the Museum’s Focus Gallery.
Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft
October 24, 2025
– February 16, 2026
Organized on the occasion of the Museum’s 50th anniversary, a milestone traditionally associated with this metal, Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft invites fresh inquiry into the nature of gold as an artistic medium.