Discover Two Pasadena Art Treasures

By Jim Farber

Only two years separate the 1975 opening of Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum and the hillside campus of the ArtCenter College of Design in 1977. The Norton Simon is one of the most highly visible museums in the world since it shows up every New Year's Day as the televised backdrop for the Tournament of Roses Parade. ArtCenter, on the other hand, designed by midcentury-modern architect Craig Ellwood, is a masterwork of elegance, form and function that is hidden away.

With its encyclopedic collection -- from medieval alter pieces to pop-art icons -- the Norton Simon Museum is a major tourist attraction. ArtCenter has a much lower profile, though its exhibition galleries and tours are free to the public. Both organizations are currently participating in the Getty sponsored festival, PST ART: Art and Science Collide.

Because it is primarily an educational facility, ArtCenter's hillside campus (at 1700 Lida St.) is not a landmark stop on the Pasadena tourist trail. However, visiting the campus to see the PST ART exhibition -- "Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art" (on through Feb. 15, 2025) is well worth the effort.

Ellwood's design is one of those architectural wonders that takes your breath away. Think of it as a midcentury-modern skyscraper of interlocking jet-black girders and glass (akin to Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building) lying on its side. Hundreds of yards long and straddling a deep ravine, its interior unfolds as a maze of classrooms, laboratories and galleries.

"Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art" features work by a large group of artist-designers that includes Refik Anadol, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Mika Tajima, Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg. The aspect their art has in common is the cutting-edge realm of data visualization.

"For these artists, data serves as a prompt, much like a language, to communicate with the audience through novel means of discourse and experimentation," said ArtCenter President Karen Hofmann. "The exhibition explores a critical cultural moment of the data divide, namely emphasizing racial, ethnic and socioeconomic inequities, as well as who data is collected by and how it is used."

On view in the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, the exhibition presents a "down-the-rabbit-hole" experience as the viewer delves into the complex data-driven methodology behind the creations: the cloud tectonic sculptures of Manglano-Ovalle, the matrix-morphing California landscapes by Anadol and the visually stunning "Pod Worlds," which are part of the worldwide "Crochet Coral Reef Project" by Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim and the Institute for Figuring. Also not to be missed are the multiple galleries devoted to current work by the students and faculty.

There is something very comfortable about a visit to the Norton Simon Museum, like a reunion with old friends -- from the Rodin figures that greet you in the entrance garden to softly lit galleries graced by Renaissance Madonnas, dainty Degas ballerinas and bold Picasso heroines.

As its contribution to PST ART, the Norton Simon has curated a luminous exhibition drawn from its permanent collection -- "Plugged In: Art and Electric Light." Spread over several of the downstairs galleries, the exhibit highlights (literally) 11 works produced between 1964 and 1970 that include Andy Warhol's 1964 "White Painting," with its nude female torso that only appears subversively when activated by ultraviolet light; Dan Flavin's stark fluorescent tube installations; and a pair of Robert Irwin's elegantly minimalist "Disk Paintings" that tease the eye with their illusion of simplicity.

The neon star of the show is Robert Rauschenberg's "Green Shirt" (1965-67). Ten feet high and 20 feet long, it is composed of an amalgam of multicolored neon tubes that have been bent into motifs derived from the artist's work and fills the entire final gallery.

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WHEN YOU GO

ArtCenter School of Design: www.artcenter.edu

Norton Simon Museum: www.nortonsimon.org

PST ART Getty: www.pst.art

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Jim Farber is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.