Art

The first art seminar is offered during the summer session.

Benjamin receives his MA in Art, after studying under painter and sculptor Jean Ames. Photo courtesy of Karl Benjamin. © Karl Benjamin, courtesy of Louis Stern Fine Arts.

Bas Jan Ader receives his MFA from the CGU Art Department in 1967. Photo courtesy of Mary Sue Ader-Anderson and the Bas Jan Ader Estate.

Reiss becomes the first full-time, dedicated graduate art faculty member. He acts as chair of the department until his retirement in 2001. Photo by January Parkos Arnall.

Michael Brewster, a Pomona and CGU alum who coined the term "acoustic sculpture," joins the CGU Art Department. Brewster would become the longest-serving member of the Art Department faculty, retiring in 2014.

After existing in several locations throughout the Claremont Colleges, the CGU Art Department is consolidated in its own building, designed specifically to house the graduate art program.

Connie Zehr, the first full-time female professor of the CGU art department becomes department chair.

First Street Gallery is founded as a program of the Tierra del Sol Foundation by CGU Alum Michael Woodcock, working through a California Arts Council Artist in Residence grant, and teachers Jane Brucker and Rebecca Hamm (the current Director). The gallery is an exhibition resource and arts management center for adults with developmental disabilities in Claremont, California.

Established during the 1996-1997 academic year, the Karl and Beverly Benjamin Fellowship in Art through the School of Arts & Humanities recognizes an outstanding student in the master of fine arts program whose major emphasis is the study of painting.

As part of Pacific Standard Time, James Turrell '73 re-creates his flare performance "Burning Bridges" at Pomona's Bridges Auditorium. The piece was originally performed in 1971 during his first year of graduate study at CGU. Photograph by Peter Kirby. Courtesy of the artist and Pomona College Museum of Art