Pasadena Museum of California Art Closing

The Pasadena Museum of California Art has been a showcase of the Golden State — landscapes by the 1920s and 1930s plein-air painters depicting sun-dappled citrus groves, Midcentury Modern art, and contemporary paintings, photography, sculpture and installation works.

But no longer. The museum’s board has voted to close the institution after its current exhibitions end Oct. 7.

As with any museum going under, it’s not the physical plant’s closing that’s the problem for the cultural community — though I happen to love the Dutch-austere and yet somehow festive MDA Johnson Favaro architecture — swirls amid its hard corners — with the best roof-terrace view in downtown Pasadena. My God but there have been some good nights up there — music and poetry and painting and endless conversation — enough to make a fellow feel urban, even urbane.

The Pasadena Museum of California Art, that Modernist beacon that has swooped above East Union Street since 2002, will close its doors at the end of the current exhibition, Executive Director Susana Smith Bautista tells me.