Director's Letter
Across our campus, our region, our nation, and even around the globe, the past year has brought periods of upheaval and uncertainty. We have experienced unrest and agitation; devastation and destruction; and seemingly endless waves of dislocation and military violence. The core values attached to higher education and cultural institutions have also been questioned with a new kind of urgency. And yet, we continue with our work. Through the combined strength of our communities, we find new purpose in developing and presenting a range of art experiences that can enlighten, inspire, provoke, comfort, and foster recognition of our common humanity.
This year our exhibitions and programs made ourstake in community building especially clear. To emphasize this commitment, we have become regular participants in Claremont’s monthly open house event, Art Walk. We also provided grant-writing assistance in the spring and organized an artists’ supply drive in June to support the artists and art workers in our region whose homes, materials, and studio spaces were consumed or damaged by the wildfires in January. These efforts, combined with our existing partnerships with local service organizations such as Claremont Canopy and Uncommon Good, deepen our commitment to local impact.
In the fall of 2024, we were honored to take part in Getty’s latest iteration of Pacific Standard Time (PST), Art & Science Collide. This ongoing initiative brings together dozens of arts organizations across Southern California to interpret a specific theme. It was a pleasure and a privilege to contribute to the region-wide conversation on art and science, and it was a joy to have such strong motivation to visit sister museums and galleries. For PST, guest curator Kris Kuramitsu ’93 led our efforts to identify the evolving legacy of the Light and Space movement in the exhibition Open Sky. Through Kris’s vision, we were able to see our historical role as a foundational site for the movement within the broader context of visual and performing artists working today in time-based media, sculpture, and installation art. A special feature of Open Sky was the two-night run of Moon Mine, a site-specific song cycle that we commissioned as an extension of the exhibition. Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade composed and produced the work or two vocalists, a trumpet, and a violin to be performed at the James Turrell Skyspace. It was a transporting event made more meaningful by the communal experience of listening and looking that all present could share.
An exhibition of recent work by Claremont Graduate University alumnus Roy Thurston ’74 amplified the connection between Claremont and the Light and Space movement. His highly textured paintings in colored silicone respond to shifts in natural light, offering a perfect match for the conditions of our beautiful Art Hall space.
In the spring we offered exhibitions that celebrated the idea of community and our ties to Pomona. Whimsical, collaborative, and provocative, One Last Thing Again brought together the entire run of THE THING Quarterly, an object-based periodical—actually mailed to subscribers—created by artists, artisans, and authors working together. Over the years, the editors of THE THING Quarterly, visual artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, have created and nurtured their own universe of wildly creative and irreverent contributors, and we were delighted to dis-play their work here.
Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play showcased a collection that Lethem, a professor at Pomona, developed through exchanges with artist friends for whom he contributed creative writing. He has now begun donating works from his collection to the Benton, and the Parallel Play exhibition became a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the deep partnership between Professor Lethem and the museum. We remain grateful to him and his family for their early enthusiasm for our new building and our programs, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration in the years ahead.
The Black Ecologies exhibition brought to realizationa dreamlike vision conjured at a dinner following a lecture organized by Professor Cherene Sherrard-Johnson. After listening to the visiting speaker discuss the significance of the natural environment to the resilience of enslaved Black Americans, we realized that a number of works in the College’s art collections relate directly to that theme. With the further collaboration of Professor J Finley, we developed an exhibition checklist that was shared with students, who in turn authored the interpretive texts that accompanied works in the exhibition. The result reflected a collective effort among professors from different disciplines with students and museum staff.
The work of the most recent year of our AllPaper Seminar was featured in our exhibition Doubles, a project that asked fellows in the seminar to consider how two distinct works of art speak to each other across different moments of production. Loans from the collection of Ian White, a stalwart supporter of the museum and the AllPaper Seminar specifically, enriched the selections from our permanent holdings. A reunion event in April brought together members from all three cohorts of the AllPaper Seminar, a community within our broader Benton network of artist collaborators, former and present interns, campus partners, and local constituents.
If you are reading this letter, you too are a vital member of the communities we seek to serve and engage. It is the reward of these relationships of mutual support that gives me unending hope for what we can still achieve.
Strategic Plan Update
Collections Assessment
One of the few remaining tasks of our current strategic plan relates to an assessment of the permanent collections in our care. Perhaps not surprisingly, the expanded space of our new building has brought commensurate growth in our collections, largely through gifts. The time is therefore ripe to consider what areas of strength we can identify and where we see opportunities for strategic development.
We began our process by addressing basic questions of what comprises our collections: how many, what kind, which object types, locations of geographic production, time periods of creation. Our primary motivation was to develop consensus in how we generally speak about the scope and strengths of our holdings. We also wanted to quantify the use of our collection, which is robust given our active study rooms and rotating exhibition schedule.
The increasingly rich content in our collection data-base allowed us to develop an overview of object types. We better appreciate that the majority of our holdings corresponds to works on paper (prints, drawings, and photographs), with photography representing approximately fifty percent of our total number of objects. We also acknowledge that our collections overwhelmingly reflect artistic production in North America, with European makers represented in some depth as well. Although we care for items that have survived for millennia, most of the items in our care were produced in the second half of the twentieth century.
Concentrating for now on works on paper, we will soon turn our attention to public art, textiles, paintings, and items of traditional ritual use. Our ultimate goal is the articulation of a comprehensive collection development plan that will help focus our limited resources on furthercollection growth while we identify other areas for mainte-nance and continued stewardship.
History of the Collections
1927–1929: Gift of Native American collection of Mr. Jonathan Tibbet
1930: Commission of José Clemente Orozco's Prometheus
1933: Gift of Emil Steffa collection of 142 Cahuilla baskets and his manuscript
1950: Gift of Parker collection of 700 Native Southwest items
1961: Kress Foundation donates a series of Italian Renaissance panel paintings
1975: Gift of Norton Simon first edition impression of prints by Francisco Goya
1980: Gerard R. Pomerat donates 800 19th-century and early 20th-century French and English prints
2001: Walter and Elise Mosher Memorial Fund established, which creates opportunity for important museum purchases
2007: Dividing the Light (Skyspace by James Turrell '65) opens to the public
2020: Alison Saar's public art commission Imbue inaugurates the new Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
Collection Assessment Advisory Committee: Paulina Alvarez, Janet Benton, Steve Comba, Karen Hudson, David Knaus, Kathleen LaManna, Victoria Sancho Lobis, Solomon Salim Moore, Solveig Nelson, Richard Rand, Ian White
What types of objects comprise our collections?
Our collections span 41 different object types.
Photographs 50%
Prints 21%
Tools and instruments 4%
Baskets 4%
Pottery 3%
Paintings 3%
Sculpture 2%
Decorative Arts/Jewelry 7%
Drawings 2%
Textiles 2%
Film/video <1%
Books/ephemera ~1%
Ceremonial objects ~1%
Exhibitions
Open Sky: Xin Liu, Agnieszka Polska, Marcus Zúñiga
August 15, 2024–January 5, 2025
Open Sky presented the work of contemporary artists who take on light and space as both material and subject to encourage us to reconsider our place in the universe. Taking a cue from James Turrell’s Skyspace Dividing the Light at Pomona College, artists Xin Liu, Agnieszka Polska, and Marcus Zúñiga fluidly engaged scientific, cultural, and artistic languages—robotics, physics, virtual reality, Mesoamerican spiritual practices, and more—to stage experiential explorations of what it means to be human at this seemingly precarious moment. The exhibition forged new frameworks that recalibrated relative scales of time and space; it unfolded as a series of propositions for reconsidering relations between earth and sky—and our position as subjects between them.
Kris Kuramitsu, guest curator
Open Sky was among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a landmark regional event that explored the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART was presented by Getty.
Additional support for this exhibition and related programs was provided by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund and the Carlton Seaver Fund.
Moon Mine
October 3 and 4, 2024
In conjunction with Open Sky, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade presented Moon Mine, a site-specific song cycle performed at dusk at James Turrell’s Dividing the Light. The work traced the stories of two lunar travelers, each hoping to find their own destiny in the nighttime sky. Voices and instruments intermingled as our travelers found their cosmic yield was not what they expected. Moon Mine was the subject of a lengthy feature by PBS SoCal, which can be seen online.
Music by Malik Gaines
Lyrics by Alexandro Segade
Performed by Carmen Edano, Julien Knowles, Ben Han-Wei Lin, and Laila Zakzook
Conducted by Kevin Terrell Madison
Costumes by PATRIA
Sound design by Danny Fiandaca
Produced and directed by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade
Moon Mine was among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a landmark regional event that explored the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART was presented by Getty.
Roy Thurston: Recent Work
August 15, 2024–June 29, 2025
During the 1960s and 70s, The Claremont Colleges served as an important intellectual springboard for the Light and Space movement, itself so essential to defining artistic production in Southern California in the mid- to late twentieth century. This exhibition brought together recent examples of the work of Roy Thurston, including a monumental installation for the Benton’s double-height atrium. His textured paintings—coated with pigmented acrylic polyurethane or silicone—require the viewer’s rapt attention to perceive how colors and depths change with the ambient light in the gallery space and thus continue to address the concerns of Light and Space artists.
Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton and Associate Professor of Art History, and Li Machado, curatorial assistant. Installation expertise provided by Roy Thurston, artist; Gary Murphy, senior preparator; and Gillian Holzer, exhibitions coordinator
Support for this exhibition was provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance and the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund.
The Instrumental Image: Aerial Photography as Problem and Possibility
August 15, 2024–January 5, 2025
This exhibition featured a range of aerial photographs from the Benton’s collection alongside artists’ creative questions about what it means to take a photograph from theair. Dating from the nineteenth century, aerial photographyevolved as a way of seeing through mechanical, ratherthan human, means. Instrumentalized during war and state surveillance systems, such photography also has its alter-native histories, which were explored in this exhibition.
Solveig Nelson, curator of photography and new media
Early concept phase participants: Dante Christian ’25; Jade Star Lackey, Professor of Geology; Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis & History; Nicole Moore, Visiting Assistant Professor of Geology and Claire Nettleton, Academic Curator. Exhibition research: Tristen Alizée Leone ’26 and Clark Louis PZ ’26
Support for this exhibition was provided by the Judith A. Cion ’65 Fund and the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund.
One Last Thing Again
February 13–June 29, 2025
THE THING Quarterly was an object-based periodical started in 2007 by visual artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, with each issue conceived by a different contributor (artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, designers, and more), including novelist and Pomona College professor Jonathan Lethem, Miranda July, John Baldessari, and Gabriel Orozco. This exhibition featured the complete run of the publication in conjunction with Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play: Contemporary Art and Art Writing.
Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton and Associate Professor of Art History
All works on view were shown by courtesy of THE THING Quarterly. Support for this exhibition was provided by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund.
Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play: Contemporary Art and Art Writing
February 13–June 29, 2025
Jonathan Lethem, esteemed novelist and Roy Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing and English at Pomona College, has long been close to the contemporary art world, offering commentary, critique, and thoughts on today’s visual art. This exhibition, which celebrated the publication of his first volume of art writing, presented work from or related to Lethem’s personal collection, often acquired in a fluid system of exchange with artists and galleries.
Solomon Salim Moore, academic curator, and Jonathan Lethem, with curatorial interns Ava Monheit PZ ’27 and Serena Li ’26
Programs related to this exhibition were supported by the Pomona College English Department.
Black Ecologies in Contemporary American Art
February 13–June 29, 2025
This interdisciplinary exhibition explored relationships among Black people, Land, and the Environment, offering a new frame through which to understand current issues such as climate change as well as a new basis for anchoring historical narratives of plantation slavery, urban development, and other facets of racial capitalism. Including works by Dawoud Bey, Tony Gleaton, Wardell Milan, Alison Saar, and Kara Walker, this multimedia presentation prompted us to consider how Black experience in America has been defined or informed by natural and built environments.
J Finley, Associate Professor of Africana Studies; Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Chair of English and E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities; and Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton and Associate Professor of Art History, with curatorial intern Tristen Alizée Leone ’26. With contributions by students of the classes Race, Gender, and the Environment (Departments of English and Women and Gender Studies) and Unruly Bodies: Black Womanhood in Popular Culture (Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies) at Pomona College in Fall 2024
This exhibition was supported by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund and the Rembrandt Club of Pomona College and Claremont. Programs related to this exhibition were supported by the Pomona College English Department.
Doubles: Prints and Drawings from the Collections of the Benton Museum of Art and Ian White
February 13–June 29, 2025
Doubles showcased the creative choices of the 2024 AllPaper Seminar fellows, who dove into the collections of works on paper from the Benton Museum of Art and IanWhite, and emerged with pairs of works, based strictly on what caught their eyes and intellectual interests. The concept of “doubling”—two artists working in the same medium, or a print and photograph of the same subject—enriches not only our understanding of individual works of art but curatorial decision-making in museums more generally.
Solomon Salim Moore, academic curator, and Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of theBenton and Associate Professor of Art History, with curatorial intern Tristen Alizée Leone ’26
The AllPaper Seminar was made possible with support from Getty through its Paper Project initiative. The continuation of the seminar was supported by the Tavolozza Foundation.
Creative Content
Noah Rosenberg, an independent filmmaker, collaborated with us to create three long-form videos featuring the art and artists of Open Sky as well as a sustained and thoughtful portrait of Roy Thurston.
Open Sky at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College: https://youtu.be/z5gfMPYTA9M
Xin Liu featured in Open Sky at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College: https://youtu.be/B4kj4jnOwmI
Marcus Zúñiga in Open Sky at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College: https://youtu.be/FP4Xlrgv0sE?
Studio Visit with Roy Thurston: https://youtu.be/7GE4AItbzrk
The Benton’s growing library of videos can be found on the museum’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@bentonatpomonacollege
The Benton's Web Kiosk
KAREN HUDSON
Collection Manager
The Benton’s collection database saw very significant growth over the last year, easily searchable under the “Collections” banner on the museum’s website. All of the Benton’s approximately 20,000 items have a record in our database, but last year we enriched those records with new data about makers, material types, and more precise dating. We also added hundreds of new color images. Some images replace old, lower-resolution images, while others have been linked for the very first time.
Additionally, we expanded our project to capture detail photographs of our collection, including back views of our works on paper. Many people may not realize how much information about a work of art is available on the back. Artist signatures, titles, distributors’ labels, exhibition data, and information about creation place are only a few examples of what you can find on the back of an artwork. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and these new images prove the maxim.
Detail views are also teaching us new things about our collection. We are now able to share 8,400 object records with detail and/or back views, and our goal is to expand that to our entire collection of 20,000 items. We also look forward to continuing to enhance search function and digital visitor experience.
Acquisitions
116 Total Objects Acquired in 2024
We added:
71 photographs, further strengthening our largest collection area and testifying to the acumen and eye of Solveig Nelson, our recently hired curator of photography and new media
27 prints and drawings + 10 paintings, as well as sculptures, a textile, and an assemblage
Before 2024: 19,847 objects
After 2024: 19,963 objects
Featured Acquisitions
Unknown Gandharan artist
Torso of Buddha or a Bodhisatva, 2nd to 4th century CE
Schist
185/8 × 9 × 33/4 in. (47.31 × 22.86 × 9.53 cm)
Pomona College Collection, Gift of Athena Tacha and Richard Spear, P2025.4.3
This elegantly draped torso is one of a group of twenty Indus Valley and South Asian objects given to theBenton by Athena Tacha and Richard Spear, a collection that adds a new dimension to the museum’s holdings. Tacha and Spear, a visual artist and art historian respectively, have long-standing affiliations with college art museums, and we are honored to advance the teaching mission of our collection with their gift. We welcomed these new arrivals to the Benton with a study day featuring retired LACMA curator ande steemed scholar Dr. Pratapaditya Pal; members of The Claremont Colleges faculty active in this research area joined us in celebrating this recent gift.
Félix Bracquemond
The Undergrowth, c. 1870
Charcoal on paper
12 × 163/8 in. (30.48 × 41.59 cm)
Pomona College Collection, Restricted gift of Evelyn and John Popp ’78, P2025.12.1
The AllPaper Seminar and its attendant exhibitions have established the Benton as an active study center for works on paper. This delicate landscape by theFrench nineteenth-century artist is an important addition to the museum’s growing collection of drawings, which focuses on representing a broad range of techniques and the varied functions of the practice of drawing itself.
George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupinde Franceuil)
Castle in a Landscape—Two Small Children with a Dog in the Foreground, c. 1824–76
Gouache on paper
45/8 × 61/4 in. (11.75 × 15.88 cm)
Pomona College Collection, Restricted gift of M. Helen Pashgian ’56, P2025.3.1
Alumna, artist, and longtime friend of the Benton Helen Pashgian ’56 supported this acquisition of a watercolor by a surprising artist: celebrated nineteenth-century author George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Franceuil).In addition to her literary talents, Sand was an experimental watercolorist and draftsperson, and this work builds on the Benton’s commitment to representing women artists in the collection.
Unknown Dutch artist
Strongbox and Key, second half of 17th century
Wood
231/8 × 193/4 × 197/8 in. (58.74 × 50.17 × 50.48 cm)
Pomona College Collection, P2025.5.1a,b
The museum is excited to welcome this hybrid object, notable in how it reflects the daily life of print culture and decorative arts in the seventeenth century. An artwork in its own right, a storage box, and an object of wonder, the strongbox is unique in its ability to prompt questions about how prints were displayed and viewed, and, with its leather cover and metal fittings, the material culture of the era.
Gregg Bordowitz
Tetragrammaton (Non-Binary Fade), 2021
10 Grand Press, printer and publisher
Monotype on paper
30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.88 cm)
Pomona College Collection, Janet Inskeep Benton ’79 Endowed Fund, P2025.6.2
Conceptual artist, poet, essayist, and AIDS activist Gregg Bordowitz developed a daily routine of drawing in notebooks; this routine took cues from ancient Jewish meditative practices, whereby four Hebrew letters, or the tetragrammaton, are moved in and out of the mind’s eye to create combinations that indicate the unpronounceable name of G-D. Bordowitz collaborated with master printer Marina Ancona to transform the notebooks into a series of unique monoprints.
Christoffel Jegher
After Peter Paul Rubens
The Garden of Love, c. 1633–35
Woodcut printed from two blockson two sheets of paper
189/16 × 4715/16 in. (47.15 × 121.76 cm)
Pomona College Collection, Restricted gift of Karen and Robert Hoehn in honor of Victoria Sancho Lobis, P2024.24.1.1–2
This rare example of a collaboration between Rubens and Jegher adds to the Benton’s already strong holdings of woodblock prints. A gift of the esteemed print collector Robert Hoehn and his wife, Karen, in honor of Victoria Sancho Lobis, the work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition of woodblock prints.
Engagement
Academic Engagement
SOLOMON SALIM MOORE
Academic Curator
1,209 college students served through class visits
This year was my first as the academic curator of the Benton after four years as the museum’s assistant curator of collections. I’m immensely enjoying even greater contact with the students and faculty of the 5Cs, and I’m committed to understanding how we can even better serve these communities. (To that end, we have started capturing more information about the objects most requested by faculty, students, and scholars; this information can help us prepare material for visiting students and foster cross-collection dialogues.)
Our academic engagement primarily takes two forms: as a host for classes visiting our exhibitions and permanent collection, and as an arena in which students in and of the visual arts can develop their interpretive and writing skills. On the first front, this year we hosted 1,209 students visiting either our exhibitions or our permanent collection study rooms (or even sometimes both) across 89 college-level class visits. Students and faculty came to us from Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona, Scripps, and Claremont Graduate University (83 visits in all). From outside of the 7Cs, faculty members from Cal Poly Pomona, Chaffey College, Mt. San AntonioCollege, and University of La Verne also brought their students to the museum. We work closely with faculty on designing curricula that bring our objects to their lesson plans, and we are gratified that our works can be creatively integrated into so many different disciplines.
On the second front—serving as a “laboratory” for deep student engagement—two of our exhibitions from2024–2025 were the products of rich interdisciplinary collaborations with Pomona College professors: Black Ecologies in Contemporary American Art with Cherene Sherrard-Johnson and J Finley, and Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play with, of course, Jonathan Lethem. These collaborations presented students and interns with the rare and unique opportunity to study directly from primary sources and write many of the interpretive gallery texts for the installations, in addition to leading to several partnerships with academics, artists, designers, and scholars from institutions across the United States.
Classes visits were from the following academic departments:
Africana Studies
American Studies
Anthropology
Archaeology
Architecture
Art History
Asian American Studies
Chinese
Classics
Cognitive Science
Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities (Scripps)
Critical Inquiry Seminar (Pomona)
Dance
English
Environmental Analysis
French
Freshman Humanities Seminar (Claremont McKenna College)
Gender and Women’s Studies
Geology
History
Indigenous History
Latin American Studies
Media Studies
Neuroscience
Psychology
Sociology
Spanish
Studio Art
Program Highlights
2024
JULY
VIEWING
Weaving Circle and Collection Viewing
Led by Rose Ann Hamilton and Lorene Sisquoc
AUGUST
VIEWING
New Student Orientation Open House
SEPTEMBER
OPENING RECEPTION
Fall Exhibitions and Artist Panel
Featuring Open Sky artists Xin Liu and Marcus Zúñiga, moderated by guest curator Kris Kuramitsu
ARTIST TALK
Roy Thurston in Conversation with Michael Slenske
SCREENING AND ARTIST TALK
Pá'Čapa Documentary Screening and Directors Panel
Featuring Lorene Sisquoc, Blossom Maciel, Daisy Ocampo Diaz, and Rosie Aranda
OCTOBER
PERFORMANCE
Moon Mine
A site-specific song cycle performed at dusk at the James Turrell Skyspace
NOVEMBER
ARTIST TALK AND PRINTMAKING WORKSHOP
Chakaia Booker and Essye Klempner
LECTURE
“The Science of Optics; The History of Art” by Charles M. Falco
DECEMBER
World AIDS Day at the Claremont Colleges
STUDY DAY
"The Instrumental Image"
With Leslie Wilson, academic curator and director of research programs at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and Prints and Drawings Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
2025
JANUARY
PERFORMANCE
Night-Sky
A site-specific performance by Elainie Lillios at theJames Turrell Skyspace as part of the 33rd Annual Ussachevsky Festival of Electroacoustic Music
FEBRUARY
LECTURE
“Sharing Stories Through Food: Honoring Uncredited Culinary Innovators”
with chef Martin Draluck of the Black Pot Supper Club
ARTST TALK
Sa’dia Rehman
MARCH
WORKSHOP
“Look, Shift, Return”
A day of communal writing (or writing out loud) using manual typewriters to celebrate Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play
VIEWING AND LECTURE
Dolores Huertas and César Chávez Remembrance Dinner, Collection Viewing, and Lecture
By Dr. José Calderón, professor emeritus in sociology and Chicano/a-Latino/a Studies at Pitzer College
POETRY READING
Quan Barry
APRIL
LECTURE
THE THING Quarterly Presents Two or Three Things
Featuring artists David Korty, Liz Walsh, and Brian Roettinger with THE THING Quarterly editors Jonn Herschend andWill Rogan
ALLPAPER SEMINAR
The Third-Year Review
MAY
LECTURE
Roundtable with Rody N. López ’09
Executive director at Craft Contemporary
PERFORMANCE
Tabla performance
By Salar Nader at the James Turrell Skyspace
LECTURE
Surviving the Long Wars
Hybrid Book Launch and Celebration
JUNE
WORKSHOP
Conversing Through Line: Four Artist-Led Workshops
Student-Centered Programs
JUSTINE BAE BIAS
Assistant Director for Engagement
The events that the Benton produces with and for our student community aren’t limited to the school year; in 2024–2025, we hit the ground running with a special open house during the student orientation period in August and then organized and hosted events through the end of June, when our spring exhibitions closed. We delighted all of the five senses: sight, with our exhibitions and offerings in the visual arts; hearing, with several live musical performances throughout the year; touch, with jewelry making; and even taste and smell, with a cooking demonstration and tasting in February.
Though we organized a variety of events, we focused on building partnerships in sustainability and the visual arts. Together with Pomona College’s EcoReps, we hosted two signature events. “Harvesting Tomorrow’s Wardrobe: A Sustainable Fashion Show” in October showcased emerging student designers and stylists—Felicia Akinde ’27, MateoChanel ’28, Ruth Metcalfe ’25, Isha Raheja ’27, Alexandra Runnels ’25, and Renee Tian ’27—working with locally and sustainably sourced materials through The Walker Free Room, secondhand shops, and upcycle exchanges. And inApril, during 5C Sustainable Fashion Week, we screened RiverBlue, a documentary about the role of the fashion industry as one of the largest sources of pollution in the world, and hosted a Q&A with one of the film’s directors, Roger Williams.
Our 5C Museum of Art Club, with its 100+ members, coordinated trips to Craft Contemporary, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Grammy Museum, in addition to visiting on-campus exhibitions and events at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps and Pitzer College Art Galleries. And I’m pleased to report that, for the first time, the annual Dolores Huertas and César Chávez Remembrance Dinner, produced by the Chicano Latino Student Affairs group, was hosted at the Benton. Our interns Paloma Garcia PZ ’25, Esteban Macias ’27, and Brenda Rodriguez ’26 selected works from our collection—including the César Chávez press photographs—for a viewing, introduced our esteemed lecturer Dr. José Calderón, and moderated a lively Q&A after the lecture.
Claremont Colleges Partners
7C Asian American Advisory Board of The Claremont Colleges
Admissions, Pomona College
Alumni and Parent Engagement, Pomona College
Art History Department, Pomona College
Asian AmericanResource Center, Pomona College
Associated Students of Pomona College
Chicano Latino Student Affairs
Division of Student Affairs, Pomona College
Draper Center for Community Engagement
EcoReps at the Sustainability Office, Pomona College
English Department, Pomona College
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Scripps College
French Department, Scripps College
Gender andWomen’s Studies, Pomona College
History Department, Pomona College
The Hive
Intercollegiate Department of African American Studies
Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies
KSPC 88.7FM
McAlister Center for Religious Activities
Music Department, Pomona College
Native Indigenous Resource Center, Pomona College
Office of Advancement, Pomona College
Office of Black Student Affairs of The Claremont Colleges
Office of Institutional Diversity, Harvey Mudd College
Office of Student Life, Diversity, & Leadership (SLDL) at Claremont Graduate University
Orientation Committee Student Affairs, Pomona College
Pomona Student Union
Queer Resource Center of The Claremont Colleges
Ruth ChandlerWilliamson Gallery, Scripps College
Scripps Communities of Resources andEmpowerment (SCORE)
Strive to Thrive, Pitzer College
Student Affairs, Keck Graduate Institute
Student Affairs, Pitzer College
Studio Art Department, Pomona College
Title IX and Campus Advocacy, Resources, Education and Support (CARES), Pomona College
5C Student Groups and Organizations
5C Art for Liberation
5C Jewelry Club
5C Museum of Art Club
5C Muslim Student Association
The Walker Free Room
Community Programs
JUSTINE BAE BIAS
Assistant Director for Engagement
RICH DEELY
K-12 Education Specialist
“We had artist talks, workshops, demonstrations, pop-up exhibitions, and programs, all of which supported independent writers, artists, and creators.”
The Benton aims to support the many communities around us, including the academic community of Pomona and the 5Cs, our neighbors in and around Claremont Village, and those who form the creative life of our area, many of whom were devastated by the wildfires in January. Amid the tragic loss of studios, archives, and materials, we offered our skills and platforms: grant-writing support for artists applying for relief and, a few months later, an artist supply drive for ceramists, printmakers, draftspeople, and fiber artists.
We celebrated local graphic artists with “Over Here,” our Claremont zine fest produced with Curious Publishing, which drew hundreds of people over two days to our Johnand Louise Bryson Courtyard to pore over the works of more than thirty exhibitors specializing in the art of print. We had artist talks, workshops, demonstrations, pop-up exhibitions, and programs, all of which supported independent writers, artists, and creators.
One of our favorite tasks of the year was seeking out eight vintage typewriters for our “Look, Shift, Return” event in March in honor of our exhibition Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play. This “writing out loud” event filled our Loeb Family Pavilion with the clackety-clack fully recognizable to those visitors of a certain age and yet totally unfamiliar to many of our students.
We are extremely grateful for the work of our talented Community Arts Engagement interns Emily Stoutjesdyk ’25 and Jessica Tong ’27. They helped organize, host, collate, collect, and coordinate not only the events mentioned above—and the special performances of Moon Mine—but every one of our many community-oriented programs this year.
Community Partners
Claremont Art Walk
Claremont Canopy
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art
Claremont Unified School District
Curious Publishing
SoCal Museums
Uncommon Good
Impact
Visitors
NILOFAR NARAGHI
Visitor Services Manager
JUSTINE BAE BIAS
Assistant Director for Engagement
23,710
In-Person Total Attendance
July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025
15,062
Front-door attendance
5,716
Event attendance
1,209
Class visits
1,723*
School programs
Notable Press Mentions
Los Angeles Times
Artforum
Forbes
Digital Presence
ERIKA ITO
Communications Manager
As the Benton’s new communications manager, I am thrilled to be a part of an art museum that aims to make art accessible across all disciplines. With my passion for storytelling, I am committed to elevating the awe-inspiring stories and voices from the Benton.
In my first months at the Benton, I developed short-term and long-term strategies to increase brand aware-ness on Meta (Instagram and Facebook) and YouTube after a careful review of our content and that of our sister institutions. I also immersed myself in everyday activities at the museum, which supplied more ideas for content than anyone could actually produce! I’ll be working closely with independent filmmaker Noah Rosenberg on creating a stronger YouTube presence for the museum over the coming year, and I am already heartened to see our engagement increase with some of our newer efforts.
I would like to acknowledge Erik Recendez, who served as a part-time communications assistant through the 2024–2025 academic year. During his time at the Benton, Erik increased the audience reach of the museum’s Instagram and Facebook pages, creatively promoted on-site events, and shared stories about artworks from our collections—as well as assisted me in my transition. I will strive to keep building on the lively presence of our social media pages and deepen the engagement with our audiences.
In preparation for the upcoming academic year, I want to align our social media strategy with the ongoing approach to the emails sent to our subscribers on a biweekly basis. What makes the Benton emails stand out from the rest are the consistent messages personally written by staff, student intern, artist, or curator. Why not bring their voices over to our social media platforms? I would love to create more short-form video content featuring the unique voices of our staff, students, and museum collaborators. My vision for the Benton’s online presence is a platform that cuts through the audiovisual noise in the digital world, sparks curiosity, and ultimately encourages viewers to become active participants in the arts.
5,700 FOLLOWERS
(up 31% over past year)
80,000 AUDIENCE REACH
Includes organic posts and paid ads
7,000 AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
Number of likes, comments, shares, and saves
WEBSITE
152,795 TOTAL VIEWS
69,719 TOTAL USERS
MOST VISITED WEBPAGES
25,000 views James Turrell’s Skyspace
23,000 views Benton homepage
8,900 views Exhibitions page
YOUTUBE
225 SUBSCRIBERS
3,400 VIEWS
Total views across all videos
105 HOURS
Total watch time on all Benton videos
EMAIL PROGRAM
4,317 SUBSCRIBERS
Up 7% over past year
48% EMAIL OPEN RATE
Number of recipients who opened our emails
Industry average for nonprofits is 40%
TOP EMAILS ACCORDING TO OPEN RATE
Karen Hudson on Getty Marrow Undergraduate Intern Chapi Galeano
Solomon Salim Moore appointed academic curator
Education Outreach
RICH DEELY
K-12 Education Specialist
“We truly appreciate the thoughtful slideshow, the connections you made to our prior learning, and the fresh perspective you brought to landscapes.”
Loretta Wolfinbarger
Fourth Grade Teacher
Chaparral Elementary
This year’s Education Outreach (EO) interns—Roofie Konshie ’28, Anya Lin ’28, Camila (Cami) Amaya Navarrete ’27, Leo Peters ’28, and Lea Wong ’25—brought the Benton into the lives of local schoolchildren. The interns’ enthusiastic efforts have been instrumental to our ongoing and expanding educational outreach, particularly our partnership with Title I elementary schools.
Once again, the EO team offered a lesson series centered on artist-made Native items housed at the museum to local third-grade students, providing an engaging introduction to North American Indigenous cultures. A first lesson, centered on oral traditions as exemplified by the iconic 1913work on animal hide by Kiowa artist Silver Horn, was followed by a visit to the Benton to see historic and contemporaryNative art. Our two-lesson collaboration with area fourth-grade classes uses the museum’s collection of landscape art to invite students to observe, interpret, and respond artistically to how historic movements changed physical landscapes, a focus of California’s state curriculum.
This year, the team piloted a program designed and facilitated by EO interns Cami and Roofie for sixth-grade students that explored ancient Greek and Roman myths depicted in art through the lens of comedy and tragedy, drawing connections to mythological works in the Benton’s diverse collections. Anya worked with them to create a short film related to José Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus mural in Frary Dining Hall, while Lea focused on access-related descriptive tours, and Leo led the team’s efforts to host secondary students in the spring exhibitions.
Looking ahead, we are eager to expand our collaborations with secondary school art teachers and develop enriching programs for additional primary grade audiences, further solidifying the Benton as a vital educational resource in the region.
The Benton Museum of Art gratefully acknowledges a generous five-year investment provided by the Aramont Charitable Foundation Academic and Educational Resource Fund. This gift allowed us to expand our staff, enhance our outreach programs, and build strong partnerships across our region, transforming the Benton into a vibrant educational resource that enriched the lives of students, educators, and the broader community.
Internship Program
SOLOMON SALIM MOORE
Academic Curator
The museum’s internship program continues to strengthen the interdisciplinary education of our undergraduate students from across the 5Cs with opportunities to work across the museum’s operations: curatorial, collections, educational outreach, and public programming. This year we mentored 42 students on projects ranging from exhibition design to our popular weekly gallery talk series. Our interns assisted museum staff in creating gallery guides, hosting the quarterly Salon Series, and stewarding the works in our growing collections.
As part of their introduction to museum work, this year students met with Dr. Andrew Farke, Director of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, tohear about how the ethics, care, and collecting of fossils diverge and overlap with art museums. Our interns also participated in a studio visit with local Claremont artists Emily Joyce and Kari Gatzke, both of whom had works in our spring exhibition Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play.
"This year we mentored 42 students on projects ranging from exhibition design to our popular weekly gallery talk series.”
Academic Programming Intern
Willa Frank ’25
Collections Management Interns
Giulia Bellon SC ’25
Paloma Garcia PZ ’25
Jack Martin PZ ’25
Max Uehara ’25
Community Arts Engagement Interns
Emily Stoutjesdyk ’25
Jessica Tong ’27
Curatorial Interns
Evelyn Hao ’27
Ava Ledes PZ ’25
Tristen Alizée Leone ’26
Serena Li ’26
Elisabeth Lootus ’25
Ava Monheit PZ ’27
Maya Moore ’26
Nina Owen ’24
Director’s Office Intern
Arivumani Srivastava ’26
Education Outreach Interns
Roofie Konshie ’28
Anya Lin ’28
Camila Amaya Navarrete ’27
Leo Peters ’28
Lea Wong ’25
Exhibitions and Collections Intern
Elle Propp SC ’25
Gallery Talk Directors
Dahlia Locke ’25
Clark Louis PZ ’26
Emily Stoutjesdyk ’25
Getty Marrow Undergraduate Intern
Chapi Galeano, Mt. San Antonio College ’27
Museum Ambassadors
Zena Almeida-Warwin ’28
Emmet Bolls ’28
Reilly Costello ’28
Elias Diwan ’26
Amy Du ’28
Vivian Fan ’28
Athanasios Gkoutzinis ’26
Aubrey Green PZ ’27
Evelyn Hao ’27
Nadia Hsu ’27
Adelina LaForge ’28
Isabella Leyton ’28
Aylin Metzel PZ ’27
Nicolas Riley CMC ’27
Student-Centered Programming Interns
Esteban Macias ’27
Brenda Rodriguez ’26
All student internships at the Benton Museum of Art are paid internships. We gratefully acknowledge these people and organizations that have made this possible in the last fiscal year.
Aramont Charitable Foundation
Janet Inskeep Benton ’79 Endowed Fund
Josephine Bump ’76 Curatorial Intern Fund
Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship Program
Graham “Bud” ’55 and Mary Ellen ’56 Kilsby Endowment for Student Interns
Support
KATHLEEN LAMANNA
Director of Development, Arts and the Benton Museum
What’s Good Art without Good Friends?
Launched in 2023, the Friends of the Benton is a growing community of art enthusiasts who support the mission of the museum. Created to deepen engagement and expand access to the transformative experiences that art can offer, the program continues to grow and thrive as it enters its third year.
Friends of the Benton enjoy a range of exclusive benefits, including invitations to exhibition previews, behind-the-scenes tours with curators and artists, early access to programs, and Friends-only events. They also receive regular updates and insights from museum leadership, keeping them connected and “in the know” about all things Benton.
If you aren’t already a Friend, we invite you to become one today! Your support helps us care for a collection of nearly 20,000 works, mentor emerging arts professionals, produce ambitious and thought-provoking exhibitions, and, most importantly, keep the museum free for all.
To learn more and to join, visit https://www.pomona.edu/museum/support.
Friends of the Benton Spotlight: Francine Farr
Francine Farr, a Friend of the Benton since 2024, was born and raised in Los Angeles. She graduated from Scripps College, where she was mentored by art history professor Samella Lewis.
A French-speaking art historian of museology, pre-coinage numismatics, modernism, postmodernism, Africa, the African Diaspora, the Pacific Rim, and the maritime Silk Route, Francine has enjoyed an illustrious career. She has worked as a curator, director, translator, and consultant for the Brooklyn Museum, African Meetinghouses on Beacon Hill and Nantucket, Studio Museum in Harlem, Herskovits Collection of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center, Barbier-Müller Museum in Geneva, Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden, Musée d’Art Haïtien du Collège St. Pierre in Port-au-Prince, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank. She has taught art history for the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Emmanuel College in Boston, andMontgomery College in Maryland; lectured at the American University in Paris; and participated in conferences of UNESCO’s International Council of Museums, the International Committee of Money and Banking Museums, and Australia’s Powerhouse Museum, Macquarie University, and the University of Sydney.
Now an at-large board member of Claremont’s historic Rembrandt Club, Francine continues to share her expertise and impressive art collection with museums around the world.
Francine first came to the Benton to celebrate fellowScripps alumna Alison Saar at the closing reception of Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe and was struck by the welcoming mix of “good food, friends, art, and architecture.” She met many new people and was particularly impressed by an impromptu tour of the museum’s vaults led by our very own Solomon Salim Moore.
Since that time, she has become a mainstay of the museum. Francine says, “I love the Benton community’s serenely natural individuality, collegiality, and humility, as well as its emergent transdisciplinary sensitivity, global-ism, and pragmatism.” She is becoming acquainted with members of the Benton staff, Pomona faculty, artists, and art enthusiasts at events such as the Summer Film Series, which she cites as her most recent personal favorite.
Francine decided to become a Friend because of “the consistently high-quality educational and aesthetic experience” and “the intuitive sense that something rare and wonderful is afoot, being thoughtfully orchestrated into perpetual life at the Benton, offering an unprecedented array of spiritual nourishment for peace, growth, and joie de vivre.”
We are so grateful for Francine’s support and friendship. Her deep expertise, warmth, and dedication embody the spirit of the museum and enrich every Benton gathering. We look forward to many more shared experiences in the future.
Financial Report
Operating Budget
July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025
Operating Budget does not include maintenance for buildings and grounds, utilities, and administrative services, all of which are supported through centralized Pomona College departments.
$1,389,097 Staff Compensation
$272,913 General Operations
$58,322 Student Employment
$162,248 Contract Employment
$68,164 Publications
$225,363 Exhibitions
$87,170 Programs
$17,438 Marketing
$17,327 Collection Care & Research
Funding Sources
July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025
$2,298,042 TOTAL
$1,531,458 Pomona College Operating Budget
$652,562 Restricted and Endowed Funds
$104,051 External Grants
$9,971 Museum Revenue