Events
Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Gala Porras-Kim: The Weight of a Patina of Time
Tuesday, December 5, 2023, 4:15 p.m.
Benson Auditorium
In her lecture, titled The Weight of a Patina of Time, Gala Porras-Kim will present her ongoing research on archaeological objects, institutional histories, museum ethics, and collecting practices. Porras-Kim’s research-based practice explores the relationships between objects and artifacts and the institutions that care for, collect and display them.
The 2023 Pepper Lecture with Gala Porras-Kim is jointly presented by Pitzer College Art Galleries and the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry (MCSI) and is the culminating lecture of the Fall 2023 MCSI Lecture Series: Apologies, Reparations, and Restitution.
Complete information and artist bio: Gala Porras-Kim Pepper Lecture
Exhibition:
Gala Porras-Kim will be presented at Pitzer College Art Galleries, January 27 – March 22, 2024, and is organized by Professor of Media Studies Jesse Lerner and Ciara Ennis, Director of the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University.
Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture: Lauren Bon
Tuesday, December 6, 2022, 4:15 p.m.
Benson Auditorium
Installation view of Junker Garden, 2007, 1976 Volvo 240 GL donated by Olivia Chumacero and adapted by Farmlab: Richard Nielsen, Guy Hatzvi, and Jamie Lopez Wolters, as part of Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River, at Pitzer College Art Galleries (Lenzner Family Art Gallery), September 24 – December 16, 2022. 
Installation view of Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River, at Pitzer College Art Galleries (Lenzner Family Art Gallery), September 24 – December 16, 2022. Photo: Christopher Wormald, courtesy of Fulcrum Arts. 
Installation view of Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River, at Pitzer College Art Galleries (Lenzner Family Art Gallery), September 24 – December 16, 2022. Photo: Christopher Wormald, courtesy of Fulcrum Arts.
Lauren Bon will present The Metabolic Studio’s ongoing infrastructural artwork, Bending the River, which re-imagines the relationship between Los Angeles and the river that brought it into existence.
Following the lecture, Lauren Bon will give a walk-through of the exhibition.
Complete event information and artist bio: Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio Pepper Lecture
Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River is curated by Pitzer College Art Galleries and Fulcrum Arts and was initially presented as part of the 2022 Fulcrum Festival: Deep Ocean/Deep Space.
2022 Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Shift + Ground
Jack Contreras
Lily Fillwalk
Claire Manning
Olivia Meehan
Max Otake
Julia Duran Stewart
Zoe Storz
@Nichols Gallery, Lenzner Family Art Gallery, Scott Hall, Academic Quad
Food & Drink will be served at all locations during the opening reception.
For full exhibition information view 2022 Senior Thesis Exhibition: Shift Ground.
Beatriz Cortez: Cosmic Portals
Special Event and Closing Reception
Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture: Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza in conversation
Tuesday, April 12, 2022, 4:15 p.m.
Benson Auditorium
rafa esparza, Earth Eye, 2021, adobe bricks, wood, plastic, installation view (detail) were-:Nenetech Forms, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, October 8, 2021 – March 12, 2022. Photo: Evan Zavitz
Join us for Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza in conversation as they discuss their practice and engage with the ancient idea of the unfolding of worlds as a continuum and as the context for their exploration of cyborgs, hyperobjects, and gestures as acts of generosity across time and space.
Followed by a closing reception
5:30 – 7 p.m.
Pitzer College Art Galleries
Complete event information and artist bios: Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza in conversation
Masks are required for this event and guests must complete a health screening before arriving on campus: https://bit.ly/3Nzt52l
Guests from off-campus must register for a free admission ticket at Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/370eAUe
Pau S. Pescador: Working
Closing Reception
Tuesday, April 12, 2022, 5:30 p.m.
Pitzer College Art Galleries
Pau S. Pescador: Working explores the stories of trans individuals employed in the civil service sector at a time when legal protections have become contested ground. Pescador addresses these conditions in a video comprising interviews with US government trans employees and cultural historians to understand the challenges that this bureaucratic environment presents for a trans, non-binary, gender queer individual.
Masks are required for this event and guests must complete a health screening before arriving on campus: https://bit.ly/3Nzt52l
Pato Hebert: Lingering
Wednesday, March 9, 4:15 p.m.
Artist’s Talk with Pato Hebert
Presented in partnership with the Intercollegiate Department of Media Studies
Preregistration for this Zoom event: bit.ly/3BFpLgB
Wednesday, March 30, 2:45-4 p.m.
Ruti Talmor, Associate Professor of Media Studies and curator of Lingering discusses her curatorial process
Pitzer Media Studies 40.1: Contemporary Exhibition and Curatorial Practice, with professors Jesse Lerner and Ciara Ennis
Thursday, April 14, 5:45-8:45 p.m.
Closing Events
West Hall Academic Courtyard and Kallick Gallery, Pitzer College
Program
5:45 pm, Introduction:
Ciara Ennis, Curator and Director of Pitzer College Art Galleries
6:00 pm, Care Collaboration, Community and COVID — A roundtable discussion:
Pato Hebert, Associate Arts Professor, NYU
Sarah Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Sculpture
Alex Juhasz, Distinguished Professor of Film, Brooklyn College
Ruti Talmor, Associate Professor of Media Studies
7:00 pm, I Feel Like Making Love:
A reading by Reid Gómez, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Arizona
7:10 pm, Longing in Rest:
A performance choreographed by Cynthia Ling Lee
7:30 pm, Lingering reception and catalogue launch: Food and drinks will be served
Masks are required for this event and guests must complete a health screening before arriving on campus: https://bit.ly/3Nzt52l
Off-campus guests must register for a free admission ticket at Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/3iXIhby
Pau S. Pescador: Working
Performance, in Lenzner Family Art Gallery
Tuesday, February 1, 2022, 3:00 p.m.
Register for the in-person performance: https://bit.ly/3ukx2AK
Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture: Sadie Barnette, Rodney Barnette, and Ericka Huggins in conversation
Tuesday, December 7, 2021, 4:15 p.m.
Register for the Zoom event: bit.ly/3xAOsbS
Sadie Barnette Artist Talk and Opening Reception
Saturday, November 6, 2021, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend
One exhibition in two venues
Opening Reception & Artist Talk
In celebration of Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend, Pitzer College Art Galleries and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College invite you to the public opening and artist talk by Sadie Barnette.
Saturday, November 6, 2021
4:00 p.m. Sadie Barnette Artist Talk
4:30–6:00 p.m. Opening Reception
Loeb Family Art Pavilion, Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
The exhibition is open for viewing at both venues throughout the event. Maps to Pitzer College Art Galleries, open 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., will be available at the Benton.
The event is free and open to the public. For the safety of our communities, masks and registration are required.
Saturday, November 6, 2021
Please register in advance or at the event upon arrival.
In collaboration with Faculty-In-Residence, Professor Andrea Scott, Pitzer College Art Galleries is pleased to present the West Coast debut of Bunker (2021), a film by Jenny Perlin. This is a rare opportunity to view Perlin’s newly released feature film outside of independent film festival circuits.
Pre-register for this free Claremont Colleges event. Masks are required, and guests must complete Pitzer’s Health Questionnaire.
Bunker is a film about people who sell subterranean living space and those that live underground. Completed just before the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections, it depicts the crafting of exclusive underground shelters across the U.S. and the conversion of missile silos into subterranean skyscrapers, whose high-end condos now sell for millions of dollars. The film also provides an intimate look at men who have, for various reasons, devoted their lives to reclaiming and inhabiting repurposed Cold War sites.
“I started traveling to meet people living underground in former missile silos and munitions bunkers in the American Midwest in early 2018, after spending a year contending with the result of the 2016 elections. The project seemed a necessary way to try to revisit and reclaim some of my own upbringing. I knew there was more to the place than the way the media portrayed it.
People ask me why I make these trips alone and how I can deal with spending days and nights underground talking with strange men who like to declaim their philosophies for hours on end. In short, I suppose that talking to others allows for a kind of dissolution that I find both satisfying and strange. As the conversation continues, it’s not at all that I agree with their perspective, but that their person-ness is present before me, and in the context in which they are speaking, it is simply logical that what they are saying comes out of them. Only later, usually as I’m transcribing the interview, does it hit me where I’ve been. But by then, the empathy is there too, all mixed in.”
—Jenny Perlin, January 2021
Jenny Perlin has written more on her film Bunker at her substack, Beyond Place.
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