A 34-Year-Old Time Capsule Bridges Past and Present Art Community

When a time capsule buried by faculty, staff and students at CGU’s School of Arts and Humanities was opened Tuesday evening, its contents offered a window into the hopes and uncertainties of those preparing to leave graduate school and enter the world — and, for at least one attendee, a moment of communicating with an earlier version of herself. 

The capsule, buried in 1992, was unveiled at a reception in the Peggy Phelps Gallery on Feb. 17, drawing alumni back to campus for a compelling dialogue between past and present — one that left organizers reflecting on the enduring power of art education and the networks it creates. 

Among those who returned was Sarah Lejeune, a 1992 graduate of the School of Arts and Humanities and part of the class that buried the capsule. For Lejune, it was a chance to reflect on how profoundly the program reshaped her life and career, one that took her art training far beyond the gallery and into the civic fabric of Los Angeles. 

Graduating into a recession with limited opportunity in traditional arts pathways, Lejeune went on to work as an urban planner for the cities of West Hollywood and Santa Monica, channeling her design training into metropolitan projects during a period of profound social change, including the AIDS crisis. Her work spanned across affordable housing and childcare policies, percent-for-art programs, the Exposition Line, and Tongva Park.  

“I think about where I took my art training, and no, I didn’t have a big show or join a gallery where my stuff sells for gazillions of dollars — but what I learned at CGU is all over the city of Los Angeles,” she said.

Lejeune said she arrived at the university from what she referred to as “a privileged, East Coast background” and found a program that fundamentally changed her worldview. She credited faculty members like Betty Ann Brown, whom she described as an incredible curator on the cutting edge of multiculturalism who worked to open up the art world at a time of significant change.

“It was no longer just the privileged world I grew up in, [the world] where I wanted to be an artist — and then to come here and have all of that broken open,” Lejeune said. “All of that came from what I learned here about inclusion … and thinking about the world in a different way. Being here, being in this program, changed me.  

David Pagel, professor of art theory and history, said he had been anxious about what they would find inside the capsule. 

“I thought it was going to be decayed, perishable stuff that had gotten wet — just a soggy glob, like a flooded cellar of an old house — and that would have been horrible,” Pagel said. “So, I was super excited that the condition was pretty good after 30-some years. And also, how thoughtful the stuff was that people left behind.” 

Kim Alexander, art gallery and art collection manager, was also at a loss for ideas about the relics left behind by past students.

“We had no idea what we would find when the time capsules were opened,” Alexander said. “We were thrilled to discover that they were packed with art, ephemera, and deeply personal stories from the early 1990s.”

The contents offered a window into the hopes and uncertainties of a generation of young artists preparing to leave graduate school and enter the world. Among the items was a typewritten letter composed the night before graduation by a student who attended Tuesday’s reception — creating what Pagel described as a moment of someone communicating with an earlier version of herself. 

“It was just the thoughts of a twenty-something about to graduate — their hopes and fears about the future,” Pagel said. “It was just paper and an envelope, typewritten, so nothing valuable in a material sense — but the message was really valuable.” 

“I want people to be able to see that what we do in the School of Arts and Humanities has stood the test of time and continues to — because that’s why the art department did theirs,” Lori Anne Ferrell said. 

The time capsule opening coincided with The Viewing Room, an exhibition on view through Feb. 27 that stages early modern European works from the Nia Collection alongside contemporary pieces by Anthony Razo Rico, Sara Ajami and Joshua Oduga. The show is organized into three sections: pre-war and post-war, the Neo-Neoclassical, and fine decorative art. 

Lori Anne Ferrell, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, said the pairing of the two events revealed a powerful resonance. 

“The Nia collection shows us how modern artists respond to the past, and the time capsule shows us how our artists responded to the past in the 1970s. That is extraordinary to me, and a gift — one that we often forget about, because we often forget about history,” Ferrell said. 

Ferrell said both the capsule’s contents and the exhibition demonstrate a continuity that the school works to preserve. 

“I want people to be able to see that what we do in the School of Arts and Humanities has stood the test of time and continues to — because that’s why the art department did theirs,” Ferrell said. “They reckoned that what they were doing 30 years ago would still be important now.” 

For Pagel, the most meaningful part of the evening was watching alumni reconnect through what the capsule revealed. 

“The best part, really, was the alumni who came back from that time and could see what their classmates had put in there,” Pagel said. “These networks just grow out of it — that person would be here and say, ‘Oh, I know these three people,’ and they’d know someone else. That connection over time was really neat.” 

The exhibition at the Peggy Phelps Gallery in Stauffer Hall, located at 925 N. Dartmouth Ave., remains on view through Feb. 27.