Emily Talbot, Acting Chief Curator, Norton Simon MuseumSaturday, March 2, 2019Working from a live model was a vital aspect of Henri Matisse’s artistic practice. He depended on the women who posed for him for creative inspiration, and several of them became trusted studio assistants and surrogate family members. This lecture focuses on three important women—the Italian known as Laurette, the former ballet dancer Henriette Darricarrère and the Russian Lydia Delectorskaya—to explore the ways that Matisse’s models facilitated the stylistic innovations for which he is best known.Presented in conjunction with Matisse/Odalisque, on view through June 17, 2019.

Norton Simon Museum Podcasts

Lecture: Matisse and His Models

Colin B. Bailey, Director, Morgan Library & MuseumSat, May 5, 2018In his comic novel The Outcry, published in 1911, Henry James characterizes the American robber baron collectors as the "conquering horde . . . only armed now with huge chequebooks instead of spears and battle-axes." The creation of outstanding private collections of European art in America was a phenomenon of the Gilded Age. James based the character of the American banker, Breckenridge Bender—"the wretch who bagged Lady Lappington’s Longhi"—on John Pierpont Morgan (1837‒1913), one of the three collectors discussed in this lecture. Morgan is joined by two younger "squillionaires"—as Bernard and Mary Berenson called them—born the same year: Henry Clay Frick (1849‒1919), the Pittsburgh industrialist, and Michael Henry De Young (1849‒1925), founder of San Francisco’s Daily Dramatic Chronicle. All three have left institutions that bear their names; yet, as Colin Bailey examines, they can be seen as quite distinct in their taste, education and motivation as collectors and founders of museums.

Lecture: Robber Baron Collectors of the Gilded Age: Morgan, Frick, De Young

Emily Talbot, Assistant Curator, Norton Simon MuseumSat, March 10, 2018Beloved by museum visitors today, Degas’s Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen was deeply divisive when it was first exhibited at the sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881. Although some viewers welcomed the tinted wax figurine as an exciting new direction in realist art, many others were disturbed by Degas’s unidealized treatment of the dancer’s body and facial features, which he reinforced by outfitting the statuette in a cotton tutu and linen slippers and a wig made from human hair. Emily Talbot explores the controversial reception of the Little Dancer in relation to other 19th-century sculptures that were seen to be excessively lifelike. She situates Degas’s mixed-media techniques within a history of challenging the classical ideal in sculpture and the legacy of these practices in 20th-century art.Presented in conjunction with Taking Shape: Degas as Sculptor. 

Lecture: Beyond the Pale: The Radical Realism of Degas’s “Little Dancer”

Encounters with the CollectionAssistant Curator Stephanie Rozman provides a closer look at two pillars from the Bharhut Stupa Railing, Female Deity (Yakshi) and an Amorous Couple (Mithuna) and The Great Departure of Siddhartha from the Norton Simon collection. 

Pillars from the Bharhut Stupa Railing

Encounters with the CollectionAssistant Curator Emily Talbot shares with viewers one of her favorite works in the Norton Simon collection: Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Cirque Fernando, Rider on a White Horse from 1887–1888.

Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Cirque Fernando, Rider on a White Horse

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor of Art History, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton UniversitySat, October 13, 2018As a young enlisted soldier in World War II, Ellsworth Kelly spent a brief spell in Paris. After the war, following two frustrating years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he returned to the French capital for a longer period. Postwar Paris offered Kelly the chance to quickly master the pictorial language of modernism, and by age 26, he had already painted his first mature works. In June 1954, he moved back to the United States, embarking on a new stylistic mode involving curvaceous planes of solid color. During a 1964 trip to Paris for an exhibition of his recent works at the Galerie Maeght, Kelly realized the two suites of lithographs displayed in Line & Color: The Nature of Ellsworth Kelly. In this lecture, Bois explores how Kelly, enjoying this third visit to France, reconnected with aesthetic ideas from his long stay years earlier. Back in America, Kelly mined his sketchbooks from 1949–54 to momentarily say farewell to curves and return to polyptychs.Presented in conjunction with Line & Color: The Nature of Ellsworth Kelly.

Lecture: Ellsworth Kelly: From New York to Paris and Back Again, Thrice

Encounters with the CollectionChief Curator Carol Togneri shares with viewers one of her favorite paintings in the Norton Simon collection: Guercino’s beloved Aldrovandi Dog from c. 1625.

Guercino's Aldrovandi Dog

Anne T. Woollett, Curator, J. Paul Getty MuseumSat, December 9, 2017By 1640, after nearly a decade of extraordinary achievement as a portrait and history painter in Amsterdam, Rembrandt rose to fame and prosperity. Self Portrait at the Age of 34 (London, National Gallery), in which Rembrandt portrays himself in the rich accoutrements of fur and velvet, has often been seen as an index to the master’s status at that time. Anne Woollett examines the ways in which this painting, with its references to Renaissance portraits from both north and south of the Alps, is not only one of the most beautiful of Rembrandt’s many self-portraits but also one of his most sophisticated exercises in self-fashioning. 

Lecture: Rembrandt and the Lure of the Renaissance

In 2016, Giovanni di Paolo's masterpiece, "Branchini Madonna,” from 1427, underwent conservation work and technical analysis at the J. Paul Getty Museum. In this video, Norton Simon Curator Gloria Williams Sander interviews Yvonne Szafran, Senior Conservator and Head of Paintings Conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum, about this study and its findings.

Examining Giovanni di Paolo's Branchini Madonna

Curator Gloria Williams Sander discusses the life of Galka Scheyer, the enterprising dealer responsible for the art phenomenon the “Blue Four”—Lyonel Feininger, Alexei Jawlensky, Paul Klee and Vassily Kandinsky, and how her art collection and archives entered the Pasadena Institute of Art, now the Norton Simon Museum.

The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection

Assistant Curator Emily Talbot examines the improvisational nature of Edgar Degas’s work in three-dimensional form, and the importance of the Norton Simon’s collection of Degas’s modèle bronzes.

Taking Shape: Degas's Modèle Bronzes

In this audio podcast, Chief Curator Carol Togneri talks to Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago, about Van Gogh’s iconic Bedroom. Produced in conjunction with the installation of that painting at the Museum from December 9, 2016 through March 6, 2017.

Audio: Van Gogh’s ‘Bedroom’ on Loan From the Art Institute of Chicago

Associate Curator Emily A. Beeny gives a brief overview of Norton Simon’s collection of works by Picasso and explores their role in the broader story of his collections. 

Norton Simon Collects Picasso

Curator Gloria Williams Sander gives a brief overview of the Norton Simon Museum’s collection of portraits by the great Dutch painter-printmaker of the Golden Age, Rembrandt van Rijn.

Rembrandt Portraits in the Norton Simon Museum

Produced in conjunction with the exhibition Dark Visions: Mid-Century Macabre, on view from September 2, 2016–January 16, 2017, Curatorial Associate Tom Norris discusses artworks from the middle of the 20th century that explore the darker side of the human condition.

Dark Visions: Mid-Century Macabre

A collection of interviews and features on topics related to the Norton Simon Museum's exhibitions and collections.

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Norton Simon Museum Podcasts

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