Preview our FALL 2026 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
POMONA COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART
It Happened at Pomona
Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969-1973
Edited by Rebecca G. McGrew, Glenn R. Phillips, Marie Shurkus. Text by Thomas Crow, David Pagel.
From 1969 to 1973, a series of radical art projects took place at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County at the Pomona College Museum of Art, in Claremont, California. Here, Hal Glicksman, a pioneering curator in Light and Space art and former assistant to Walter Hopps, and Helene Winer, later the director of Artists Space and founder of Metro Pictures gallery in New York, curated landmark exhibitions by young local artists who bridged the gap between postminimalism and Conceptual art and presaged the development of postminimalism in the late 1970s. Among these artists were Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, Mowry Baden, Lewis Baltz, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Ger van Elk, Jack Goldstein, Robert Irwin, William Leavitt, John McCracken, Allen Ruppersberg, James Turrell and William Wegman. Providing unprecedented and revelatory insight into the art history of postwar Los Angeles, It Happened at Pomona chronicles the activities of artists, scholars, students and faculty associated with the College during this period. The book provides new insight into the relationship between postminimalism, Light and Space art and various strands of Conceptual art, performance art and photography in California, while contributing substantial new information about interconnections between artistic developments in Los Angeles and New York.
Featured image is Michael Asher's "No Title," installed at the Pomona College Art Gallery in 1970, and reproduced from It Happened at Pomona. Asher’s architectural intervention dramatically altered two of the Museum's adjacent galleries, transforming them into triangular spaces joined by a narrow opening that restricted the flow of light into one space while keeping the other permanently open to the street by removing the entrance doors. By "opening" the museum, Asher initiated the conceptual art practice known as "institutional critique;" this piece is consequently widely considered one of the most important artworks produced in the United States during this period.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Angeleno Magazine
Gary Baum
It happened at Pomona chronicles the particularly fertile circle- then-upstarts locals Michael Asher, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Robert Irwin, James Turrell and William Wegman among them-which, for a brief moment, turned Pomona College's art museum into an internationally significant showcase of postminimalism, photography, light-and-space ideas and more.
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FROM THE BOOK
"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 Angles, 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…"
FORMAT: Pbk, 9 x 13 in. / 386 pgs / 120 color / 160 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $69.95 GBP £44.99 ISBN: 9780981895581 PUBLISHER: Pomona College Museum of Art AVAILABLE: 8/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
It Happened at Pomona Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969-1973
Published by Pomona College Museum of Art. Edited by Rebecca G. McGrew, Glenn R. Phillips, Marie Shurkus. Text by Thomas Crow, David Pagel.
From 1969 to 1973, a series of radical art projects took place at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County at the Pomona College Museum of Art, in Claremont, California. Here, Hal Glicksman, a pioneering curator in Light and Space art and former assistant to Walter Hopps, and Helene Winer, later the director of Artists Space and founder of Metro Pictures gallery in New York, curated landmark exhibitions by young local artists who bridged the gap between postminimalism and Conceptual art and presaged the development of postminimalism in the late 1970s. Among these artists were Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, Mowry Baden, Lewis Baltz, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Ger van Elk, Jack Goldstein, Robert Irwin, William Leavitt, John McCracken, Allen Ruppersberg, James Turrell and William Wegman. Providing unprecedented and revelatory insight into the art history of postwar Los Angeles, It Happened at Pomona chronicles the activities of artists, scholars, students and faculty associated with the College during this period. The book provides new insight into the relationship between postminimalism, Light and Space art and various strands of Conceptual art, performance art and photography in California, while contributing substantial new information about interconnections between artistic developments in Los Angeles and New York.
