Norton Simon Museum

The Norton Simon Museum contains one of the world’s foremost collections of art. Over two thousand years of Western and Asian art are housed within elegant galleries and a picturesque sculpture garden.

Whether a blade of grass or a sunset, nature surrounds us and is part of our everyday lives. When an artist observes the natural world and translates it into art, something magical happens: our surroundings are made into something new, mysterious and often wondrous.

Art inspired by nature abounds at the Norton Simon Museum. In the galleries, numerous paintings and sculptures reveal how artists choose to deal with nature. You can observe flora and fauna firsthand in the sculpture garden, where a variety of flowers, plants and trees live alongside fish and birds.

Nature Transformed
As subject and muse, the land and its bounty hold a powerful grip on the artistic imagination. Generations of artists immortalize nature in all its manifestations. Nature Transformed is an intimate exhibition exploring the diverse approaches artists adopt to depict our surroundings in paintings, photographs, prints and sculpture. A number of exciting lectures, tours and family activities relating to art and nature are also offered. Please see the Schedule of Events for dates and times.

A Closer Look
Can you find creatures that fly in the air, live in the ocean, and crawl on land in Van der Ast’s painting Still Life with Fruits and Flowers? Like scientists and natural historians of the times, Dutch artists in the 1600s were fascinated by the sheer variety of nature’s offerings.

Do you think of the forest as frightening, or as a place of comfort? In Diaz de la PeÒa’s dramatic painting, The Approaching Storm, the wilderness is revealed as a threatening place. Other landscape paintings, however, show man in peaceful coexistence with his surroundings.

A Link to Our Partners
Like painters and sculptors, composers also frequently find nature to be their muse. Enjoy nature-inspired music with performances by the Pasadena Symphony.