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  • Untitled (1966)

    Chris Burden

    One of the earliest sculptures by Chris Burden (Untitled, 1966) was produced as a bronze casting assignment for John Mason’s sculpture class at Pomona College. Despite its simple shape, the object is the result of an intense debate about the function of art, and a hard-learned lesson about the mechanics of casting. Burden recalls: “There was a debate I was having with John about what constituted art. Could a design object be art? Could something that was utilitarian also be sculpture? John said no. . . . So, I wanted to make this sculpture, this shape, which is sort of a three-sided Henry Moore. It was supposed to actually be a knife. On the sharp side, I was going to embed a razor . . . so that it could be used as a rocking chopper. I spent a lot of time making that thing, trying to get the perfect shape. I thought I could cast it solid. John didn’t say a thing. I finally finish the whole thing—it’s perfect, and then John says ‘Oh, well you can’t cast that as a solid. It has to have a core, and you have to cut it in half.’ . . . I had to start over. . . . Ultimately, I never inserted the razor. . . . I just let it go as what it was, a beautiful shape.”


    Bronze 6 1/2 x 5 in
    Collection of the artist. Photograph courtesy of the artist © Chris Burden

  • L.A./5 (1965)

    David Gray


    Welded steel, lacquer, chrome plate, flock 13.5 x 9 x 9 in
    Pomona College Collection, gift of Pam Gray and D. J. Gray © Estate of David Gray. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer

  • Slamfoot Brown (1972)

    Guy Williams


    Oil on canvas 88 x 144 in
    Collection of David and Jeanne Carlson, Rancho Mirage, California © Estate of Guy Williams. Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer

  • Untitled (from the series Stucco) (1972)

    Judy Fiskin


    Gelatin silver print 7 x 5 in. (actual image size: 2¾ x 2 in.)
    Pomona College Collection © Judy Fiskin and Angles Gallery, Los Angeles

  • K Walk (1969)

    Mowry Baden


    Aluminum 116 x 24 x 35 in
    Pomona College Collection. Photograph courtesy of the artist © Mowry Baden

Pomona College Museum of Art

It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles, 1969-1973, Part 3: At Pomona

From 1969 to 1973, a series of radical art projects took place at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles at the Pomona College Museum of Art. Here, Hal Glicksman, a pioneering curator of Light and Space art, and Helene Winer, later the director of Artists Space and Metro Pictures in New York, curated landmark exhibitions by young local artists who bridged the gap between post-Minimalism and Conceptual art and presaged the development of post-Minimalism in the later 1970s. Artists such as Michael Asher, Lewis Baltz, and Allen Ruppersberg formed the educational backdrop for a generation of artists who spent their formative years at Pomona College, including alumni Mowry Baden, Chris Burden, and James Turrell. It Happened at Pomona is a three-part exhibition, with public events and a publication, which documents a transformative moment for art history.

Part 3: At Pomona shows how the influence of both Glicksman and Winer contributed to a vibrant atmosphere within Pomona College's extraordinary community of arts faculty and students, in which artists and curators were feeding off of each other's ideas and developing some of the most important aesthetic concerns of the late twentieth century. Artists include Mowry Baden, Lewis Baltz, Michael Brewster, Chris Burden, Judy Fiskin, David Gray, Peter Shelton, Hap Tivey, James Turrell, and Guy Williams.

03/10/2012 – 05/13/2012
Pomona College Museum of Art
333 N College Ave
Claremont, CA 91711