It Happened at Pomona Part 3: At Pomona

It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969-1973Mowry BadenLewis BaltzMichael BrewsterChris BurdenJudy FiskinDavid GrayPeter SheltonHap TiveyJames TurrellGuy Williams

Oct 29

Written By Rebecca McGrew

Chris Burden, Untitled, 1966. Bronze. 6 1/2 x 5 in. (16.5 x 12.7 cm). Collection of the artist. © Chris Burden. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Chris Burden, Untitled, 1967. Oil on plywood. 72 x 72 x 72 in. (180 x 180 x 180 cm). © Chris Burden. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

David Gray, L.A./5, 1965. Welded steel, lacquer, chrome plate, and flock. 13.5 x 9 x 9 in. (34.2 x 23 x 23 cm). Pomona College Collection, Gift of Pam Gray and DJ Gray. © David Gray. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer.

Back row, from left to right: Hap Tivey, James Turrell, Gus Blaisdell, and Lewis Baltz; front row, from left to right: Mowry Baden and Guy Williams; Claremont, 1972. Photograph by Marcy Goodwin with the enlightened guidance of Lewis Baltz. Photograph courtesy of Marcy Goodwin.

Hap Tivey, Sunpainting, 1971. Window frame, paint, paper, tape, and incandescent light. 24 x 24 x 3 in. (61 x 61 x 7.6 cm). © Hap Tivey. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

The extraordinary works championed by Glicksman and Winer were shown within an equally extraordinary community of arts faculty and students at Pomona College. The final “It Happened at Pomona” exhibition shows how the influence of these exhibitions contributed to a vibrant atmosphere in which artists and curators were feeding off of each other’s ideas and developing what would become some of the most important aesthetic concerns of the late twentieth century.

Excerpt from OPENING THINGS UP: Why and How it Happened at Pomona by Rebecca McGrew

Pomona’s strong point was that there was a sense that if you really had an interesting idea, nobody was going to stand in your way. And if you wanted to be a jock and marry a princess and settle in the suburbs, you could, but if you wanted to create this new gallery situation, and show all these artworks from Los Angeles, of course, why not? It was wide open. Because of the strength of the people, the chain of associations, you didn’t have an administration saying this is too radical. It sort of caught them after the fact, and they said, “Oh, wait a minute. This is too radical.” But it was already done…

–Kay Larson (class of 1969)

Every once in a while, a pivotal moment happens in the history of art. This book argues that one such moment occurred in Southern California, at Pomona College, between the years 1969 and 1973. For artists as diverse as Michael Asher, Bas Jan Ader, Lewis Baltz, Chris Burden (‘69), Judy Chicago, Jack Goldstein, John McCracken, Allen Ruppersberg, and James Turrell (‘65), Pomona hosted major, and sometimes radical, new directions in their art. It is a surprising story: why would a moment like this happen in the sheltered, peaceful, and generally quite traditional environment of Pomona College, in the quiet city of Claremont?2 This essay endeavors to answer that question and the many other “whys” of this project: Why start with 1969? Why end with 1973? And what exactly happened at Pomona?

In its most basic form, the story goes like this: Pomona College art department chair Mowry Baden (‘58) hired curator Hal Glicksman in 1969, which set the stage for a series of innovative exhibitions that would continue with curator Helene Winer’s arrival in 1970. Curated by Glicksman and Winer, avant-garde exhibitions by influential young artists exploring the newest post-conceptual territories took place at the Pomona College Museum of Art. (The exhibition space at Pomona College changed names several times over the years. For simplicity’s sake, we will refer to it by its current name throughout this volume.) Their innovative programming included notorious performances by Chris Burden and Wolfgang Stoerchle, which, many claim, led to the firing of Helene Winer and the restructuring of the art department. The hiring of Lewis Baltz, Michael Brewster (‘68), and James Turrell in the early seventies added to the intense excitement in studio art.3 Yet, just a few years later, with the hiring of art historian Gerald Ackerman and artist Norman Hines (‘61), the department returned to a more traditional focus.

The full story of what transpired during these few short years is complex and nuanced. This moment at Pomona didn’t simply appear out of nowhere. Thomas Crow’s (‘69) essay in this catalogue chronicles the impact of the existing art scene in Claremont and delves more deeply into the connections between artists working in Claremont and the broader art scene in Southern California.

My essay examines the dynamics specific to Pomona College, but the cultural transformations of the sixties play a huge role in this story as well. Anti-war demonstrations, the sexual revolution, civil rights, women’s rights, gay liberation, the emergence of a hippie counterculture, and the rise of new left activism all led to dramatic social shifts. For the college communities in Claremont, this was a time of turmoil, fevered protest, questioning of authority, and personal and intellectual experimentation. A new sense of freedom lifted prohibitions and created new possibilities for engaging the world. Concurrently, equally dramatic shifts and transformations in art philosophy and practice created an exhilarating sense of experimentation that dramatically expanded what was possible, allowing performance, video, installation, and other dematerialized forms of art to join the more traditional mediums of painting and sculpture. While the era initially created hope for political and social transformation, by the early to mid-seventies, the utopian promise of the sixties was overtaken by disillusionment, as the promises of social change were undercut by assassinations, commercialization, and corruption. As the sixties ground to a halt, an era of complacency settled in and many wished for a “return to normalcy.” As radicalism fell from favor, the moment of “It Happened at Pomona” passed.

This essay sets forth an idiosyncratic and complex history of the visual arts at Pomona College from 1969 to 1973, drawn from research in the archives of Pomona College and the Pomona College Museum of Art, and conversations and interviews with former students, faculty, curators, and administrators. This essay explores a range of stories, knowing that many will still go untold. What follows is one version of what happened at Pomona.

March 9 – May 13, 2012 at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College