What to Know
- "Plugged In: Art and Electric Light"
- Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena
- Sept. 20-Feb. 17, 2025
- Included with admission
- "An Evening in Focus: Plugged In" will help launch the exhibit with live music, activities, and more; Sept. 21 from 4 to 6:30 p.m.
Artists have worked in all sorts of eye-catching areas for as long as art has been made, but the introduction of electricity opened remarkable new worlds in the realms of creative expression.
The light bulb first lit up rooms, but, soon after, it was giving glow to all sorts of whimsical works; neon would soon capture the fancy of imaginative art-makers, and fluorescence, too.
The Norton Simon Museum is welcoming the shorter days of autumn, and much of winter, too, with a lively beam of light: The Pasadena art institution will celebrate 11 of its "brightest" works, creations that first shimmered between 1964 and 1970.
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"Plugged In: Art and Electric Light" includes works by Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin, and Robert Rauschenberg.
"These inherently interdisciplinary objects were forged through artistic and scientific innovation," reads a message on the museum site.
"Artists collaborated with clockmakers, neon and glass benders and electrical engineers from Pasadena's own Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explore the aesthetic, conceptual and affective possibilities of electric light."
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"Decades later, these experiments confront conservators and curators with technical puzzles sparking questions about the challenges of preserving these objects for future generations."
"An Evening in Focus: Plugged In" launches the exhibit on Sept. 21; enjoy live music, activities, and more from 4 to 6:30 p.m. (the event is included with membership or admission).
Walter Miller Askin (American, 1929-2021), Polyplanograph (plano and recto), 1970, polyvinyl decals on tinted plexiglass in wood case, electric 23 x 21-3/4 x 12 in. (58.4 x 55.2 x 30.5 cm), Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Horace and Vicki Solaini Baker, © Walter M. Askin
Askin.
