IMPROVING ITS CURB APPEAL

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena unveils a $15-million renovation featuring a restored exterior as it celebrates its 50th anniversary

- BY JESSICA GELT

ETIENNE LAURENT For The Times A STATUE stands near an entry walkway outside the Norton Simon Museum, which is clad in architectural tiles that were recently refurbished by Heath Ceramics.

The largest work of art in the Los Angeles area by a woman might just be a museum.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is covered almost entirely in 115,000 handcrafted architectural tiles created by ceramicist Edith Heath in 1969. Those tiles, affixed to the facade of a curvilinear building designed by architects Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey, have recently been cleaned and refurbished as part of a $15-million renovation designed to reintroduce the underappreciated museum to the public by making its exterior match the quality and beauty of the rare art inside.

The Heath tile is one of Norton Simon's "superpowers," said project architect Liz MacLean, a principal at the firm Architectural Resources Group, which specializes in historic preservation. "I think people drive by this museum all the time and have no idea that it's clad with Edith Heath tile."

It's not just the tile made by a groundbreaking ceramicist and innovator of mid-century modern tableware that people often drive by without recognizing — it's the museum itself, said Norton Simon vice president of external affairs Leslie Denk.

The 85,000-square-foot museum housing a private collection of 12,000 objects including work by Rembrandt, Degas, Picasso, Fragonard, Goya and Vuillard — and its 79,000-square-foot sculpture garden, dotted with work by Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore and Robert Morris, are situated on a steeply graded wedge of land girded by bustling Colorado Boulevard, and the traffic-snarled 134 Freeway, near where it meets the 210.