The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is presenting a focus exhibition titled “Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer,” organized by curator Gloria Williams Sander and running through July 20. The show draws from a 1953 archive of 450 works and 800 documents, shifting focus from the Blue Four paintings to portraits and letters that reveal the personal friendships between Scheyer and the European modernists she championed—Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexei Jawlensky—as well as other artists like Maynard Dixon, Peter Krasnow, Beatrice Wood, and Edward Weston.
The exhibition matters because it reframes Galka Scheyer not merely as a dealer but as a catalytic figure whose personal connections and kinship-driven mission helped bring European modernism to the West Coast, shaping Pasadena’s role as an unlikely hub for avant-garde art. By foregrounding intimate correspondence and portraits, the show offers a nuanced view of how relationships, not just commerce, fueled the transatlantic spread of modernist ideas, and it underscores the enduring significance of Scheyer’s archive, which has remained in Pasadena since 1953.