Mingei Museum Tour to Pasadena

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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.

Mingei International’s Director of Exhibitions, Christine Knoke, will lead a curator’s tour of HIROSHIGE: Visions of Japan, the last exhibition she curated while at the Norton Simon Museum, where she was Curator of Asian Art prior to joining the Mingei International staff. The exhibition features 175 woodblock prints by the celebrated and prolific Utagawa Hiroshige

The grounds of the Museum have a long history of beautiful gardens. The original garden was planted in the 1870s when Dr. Ezra and Jeanne Carr created Carmelita. It was the most extensive garden in Pasadena, filled with plants from all over the world, many being planted by the donors themselves, including botanist John Muir, who was a friend and former student of Dr. Carr. This was part of a day trip sponsored by the Mingei museum that Ed Inskeep and I took.

An excellent Thai lunch was enjoyed by the group at Saladang.

In the afternoon we enjoyed a tour of the Gamble House in Pasadena, California, an outstanding example of American Arts and Crafts style

Architecture. The House and furnishings were designed by Charles and Henry Greene in l908 for David and Mary Gamble of the Proctor and Gamble Company. The house, a National Historic Landmark , is owned by the city of Pasadena and operated by the University of Southern California. 

Ed outside the Norton Simon museum