Sight Readings is the result of a semester-long collaboration between the Benton and students in the Pomona College English 87 class taught in Fall 2026 by Alana Felton, assistant director of the college’s Center for Speaking, Writing, and the Image. Animated by works of art that feature texts and letters, students selected more than 30 works from the Benton and additional local collections to explore—from Renaissance and Baroque engravings through contemporary works by artists such as Mirella Bentivoglio, Steve Roden, and Ed Ruscha.
The creative use of texts in works of art has a long history; each artist and era have posed provocative questions about the relationship between seeing and reading. Captions, descriptions, narration, quotations, and the incorporation of letters as forms or shapes all engage the viewer in examining fundamental assumptions about the image and the word. Some selected works of art even subvert or confound expectations of the relationship between the two.
With examples from across the history of art and interpretive labels authored by students, Sight Readings gives material form to the issues at the heart of communication: showing and telling, looking and learning, depicting and describing.
Organized by Victoria Sancho Lobis, the Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel 1923 Director of the museum and professor of art history; and Solomon Salim Moore, academic curator
