Norton Museum of Art

The Norton Museum of Art is an art museum located at 1450 South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, Florida. Florida's largest art museum, it is home to a leading collection of art, with distinguished holdings in American, European, Contemporary and Asian art and Photography. The museum was founded in 1941 by Ralph Hubbard Norton (1875–1953) and his wife Elizabeth Calhoun Norton (1881–1947); Norton was an industrialist who headed the Acme Steel Company in Chicago. Its mission statement is "to preserve for the future the beautiful things of the past." Since its founding, the institution has grown through several major expansions, most recently a landmark $100 million renovation designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster of Foster + Partners, which reopened to the public on February 9, 2019. In 2003, the Norton Museum of Art overtook the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, in Sarasota, as the largest museum in Florida.

Founding and Early History

Ralph Hubbard Norton was President of the Acme Steel Company in Chicago, and the wealth he generated, combined with an abiding interest in art that began with visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, launched a collecting career that began in the 1920s and continued until his death in 1953. He and his wife began collecting to decorate their home, but then he became interested in art for its own sake and formed a sizable collection of paintings and sculpture. In 1935, Norton semi-retired, and the couple began to spend more time in the Palm Beaches. They contemplated what to do with their art collection and eventually decided to found their own museum in West Palm Beach, to give South Florida its first such institution.

In 1940, construction began on the Norton Gallery and School of Art, located between South Olive Avenue and South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. Norton commissioned Marion Sims Wyeth of the distinguished firm of Wyeth, King & Johnson to design the museum. The museum was designed by Marion Sims Wyeth of Wyeth, King & Johnson with a frieze and two bronze sculptures by Paul Manship. The Art Deco building opened to the public on February 8, 1941.

At the time of the opening of the gallery, the Nortons had assembled an excellent collection of modern American and European paintings and works on paper, as well as a group of Old Master paintings. Norton continued to add to his collection until his death in 1953, and the works that he and his wife gave the museum form the core of the institution's collection today. Norton's use of an endowment was innovative and novel at the time he set it up to support the museum he established in perpetuity. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1994.

The Permanent Collection

The Norton Museum is internationally known for its distinguished permanent collection featuring American Art, Chinese Art, Contemporary Art, European Art, and Photography. The museum's permanent collection now consists of more than 8,900 works in five curatorial departments: European, American, Asian, Contemporary, and Photography.

The American Art collection forms the institution's historical backbone. The collection of American paintings, sculpture, and works on paper contains approximately 1,000 works of art dating from the 18th century to 1960. The institution's founder, Ralph Norton, began by collecting American art, and his holdings still form the core of the museum's collection today. The collection is particularly strong in the first half of the 20th century. Norton acquired major oil paintings by George Bellows, Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Motherwell, and Charles Sheeler; sculptures by Paul Manship, Theodore Roszak, and William Zorach; and watercolors by Charles Burchfield, Winslow Homer, and John Marin, among many others. Since 1954, many distinguished additions have been made thanks to the endowment Norton created for the purchase of works of art. They include masterpieces such as Stuart Davis's New York Mural (acquired in 1964) and Jackson Pollock's Night Mist (acquired in 1971).

The European Art collection is equally significant in scope. The collection comprises paintings, sculpture, and works on paper ranging from 1450 to 1950, including Betrayal (1515) by Lucas Cranach I, the Study for the Head of Saint John the Evangelist (1611–1612) by Peter Paul Rubens, and the portrait of Philip, Lord Wharton (1639) by Anthony van Dyck. Impressionist and later Modernist works include Gardens of the Villa Moreno, Bordighera (1884) by Claude Monet, Christ in the Garden of Olives (1889) by Paul Gauguin, The Sailors' Barracks (1914) by Giorgio de Chirico, and significant paintings and sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

The initial collection was notably strong in three key areas: Chinese bronzes and jades, European paintings (particularly 19th-century French works), and American paintings and sculpture. The museum has been recognized internationally for its travelling exhibitions and expansive collections of over 7,000 works, including European Impressionists and Modern Masters, American art from 1900 to the present, an extensive collection of works on paper and a rich body of sculpture. The Chinese collection offers superb examples of carved jades and bronze vessels, and the contemporary collection embraces art from the 1960s onward.

In 2018, the museum received a significant gift to its contemporary holdings. The Norton Museum of Art received a gift of more than 100 works from the collection of Howard and Judie Ganek, including artworks by Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, Kara Walker, Donald Judd, Matthew Barney, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Pipilotti Rist, among others.

Building and Architecture

The Norton Museum's architectural history reflects more than eight decades of growth, adaptation, and transformation. The Norton was built in 1941 as an elegant series of Art Deco-inspired single-story pavilions around a central courtyard. This original building, designed by Marion Sims Wyeth, established an east-west axial layout that would later inform future renovations.

The museum's first major expansion came in the 1990s. The museum conducted a fundraising campaign to fund an expansion and renovation, which more than doubled the size of the existing museum. The museum selected Centerbrook Architects and Planners to design the project, which was completed in January 1997. A subsequent expansion followed in the early 2000s. The Gail and Melvin Nessel Wing opened to the public on March 8, 2003, completing a two-year project to expand visitor amenities. The "art first" expansion increased the Norton's gallery space by seventy-five percent, allowing more opportunities for the museum's renowned collections of American, Chinese, Contemporary, European art, and Photography to be continually on view. Named for museum benefactors Gail and Melvin Nessel, the Nessel Wing includes fourteen new galleries and an elegant enclosed courtyard that accommodates a variety of educational and social events. The wing also featured a glass ceiling installation commissioned from Dale Chihuly, a cantilevered spiral staircase, and a three-story atrium designed to evoke the museum's art.

The Foster + Partners Expansion (2019)

Following an eight-year, $100-million renovation and expansion carried out by London-based Foster + Partners, the museum re-opened to the public on February 9, 2019 after seven months of closure. The museum opened its most ambitious and transformative expansion since 1941: a 59,000-square-foot addition of galleries, education, and public spaces, and a first-time sculpture garden, all designed by Lord Norman Foster of Foster + Partners.

Foster is the Pritzker Prize-winning architect renowned for the Apple headquarters in California, the Gherkin in London, and the airport in Beijing. His firm's approach to the Norton centered on restoring the clarity of the original 1941 design. Norman Foster stated: "The revitalization of the Norton is rooted in revealing and enhancing the original spirit of the building. Over the years, the museum had lost its sense of identity in the neighborhood. The entrance had been moved to a side road, and there was no presence of a museum. The new design redefines the museum's relationship with its surroundings by providing a main entrance on the original central axis, while creating new event and visitor spaces that will transform the museum into the social heart of the community."

At the reopening, Norman Foster revealed his two points of inspiration for the project: an existing banyan fig tree and Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Typewriter Eraser, Scale X sculpture from 1999. Both elements were crucial to the architect's intuitive redesign and reorientation of the museum's entrance. The new west-facing forecourt features a 43-foot-high metal canopy with a scalloped cutout that cuts around the towering tree. Within the shaded hollow the overhang creates, an embedded reflecting pool surrounds the massive sculpture.

The renovation added 12,000 square feet of gallery space, new classrooms, a restaurant, a 210-seat auditorium, and the sculpture garden. The Pamela and Robert B. Goergen Garden occupies what used to be a parking lot and the museum's former entrance. The new outdoor space, Foster's first public garden project, hosts different sculptures. The Norton expansion is just the first phase of a Foster + Partners master plan that will ultimately transform the museum's entire 6.3-acre campus.

Programs and Awards

The Norton Museum offers a broad range of public programming. The Norton Museum of Art hosts several special programs, including Lectures & Conversations, Art After Dark, Special Performances, Art Classes and Workshops, Families & Teens, Students & Teachers, and the Artist in Residence Program. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Sundays, when it opens at 11 a.m. The property closes later for Art After Dark programming on Friday nights.

Recognition of Art by Women (RAW)

In 2011, the Norton launched Recognition of Art by Women (RAW), an annual exhibition series that celebrates the contributions of living female painters and sculptors with solo exhibitions. Funded through the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund/MLDauray Arts Initiative, the Norton has organized solo exhibitions for British painter Jenny Saville (2011), American painter Sylvia Plimack Mangold (2012), British sculptor Phyllida Barlow (2013), Swedish sculptor Krista Kristalova (2014), and African-born, L.A.-based painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2016), among others. RAW 2024 featured the work of Rose B. Simpson, a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico.

Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers

In 2012, the Norton instituted the Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers, a biennial international award for those on the leading edge of the field who have not yet received a solo museum exhibition. Prominent art collector and longtime Norton supporter Beth Rudin DeWoody created the Prize to honor her father, the late New York City real estate developer Lewis Rudin. The prize comes with a $20,000 award. Winners have included Argentine-born, Los Angeles-based artist Analia Sabin (2012); Israeli artist Rami Maymon (2014); and New York-based artist Elizabeth Bick (2016).

COVID-19 and Recent History

The Norton Museum closed for eight months in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and reopened in November 2020 with new exhibits and safety precautions. The museum has continued to expand its collection and programming since, cementing its role as a cultural anchor in Palm Beach County.

The museum's address is 1450 South Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33401. General visitor information is available at norton.org or by telephone at (561) 832-5196.