Lead restorer Marlene Sophia applying Dutch metal leaf to the underside of the balcony.

As “Big Bridges” approaches its 2031 centennial, its iconic ceiling mural, created by Italian American artist Giovanni Smeraldi, has undergone a full restoration supported by a $1 million donation from the Timken Foundation.

“The Smeraldi mural is a priceless work of art that should be preserved for future generations to enjoy,” says Kurt Timken ’86. It was Timken’s great-aunt, Amelia Bridges, who, with her husband, Appleton Bridges, funded the original construction of Big Bridges and Little Bridges, in memory of their daughter, Mabel, who died in 1907 during her junior year at Pomona.

Brooklyn-based EverGreene Architectural Arts carried out the restoration work, which began with assessing obvious damage—water staining, cracks from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and overall fading and peeling—and cleaning the entire ceiling with dry sponges. An elaborate scaffolding system allowed the conservators to reach every inch of the mural.

When audiences return to the auditorium this fall, the ceiling won’t look vastly different, just a little fresher. Since the last restoration in the 1970s, explains restorer Brynn Griffiths, “dirt and soot and smoke and time” have taken their toll. “A lot of the pigments that were used in the past,” she says, “were not light fast, and with time they discolor and oxidize.”

The most noticeable changes for audience members may be the proscenium arch and the underside of the balcony (EverGreene site lead Marlene Sophia is shown here applying Dutch metal leaf to that area). The restoration team was able to peel back an area of the tan paint that has covered it for the last 50 years and uncover the original colors and patterns beneath.

If you’ve walked past the Benton Museum of Art recently, you may have noticed a striking yellow-and-black sculpture on display in the courtyard that faces College Avenue. Chris Burden ’69 originally designed the piece, Untitled (2011), as a student project at Pomona, but it wasn’t fabricated until 2011, the year that the Pomona College Museum of Art (now the Benton) opened the exhibition It Happened at Pomona. For that show the museum’s staff worked with Burden to complete the work. After the exhibition closed, the sculpture lived in Lyon Court outside Montgomery Art Hall until 2020, when it was moved to the new Benton building to inaugurate the John and Debbie Starr Family Sculpture Patio. Now, six years later, museum staff have reinstalled Untitled in the John and Louise Bryson Courtyard, where visitors can engage with it “in the round,” on all of its four sides.

Faculty Cherene Sherrard-Johnson and J Finley in front of the recent exhibit

As a teaching institution, the Benton Museum of Art strives to cultivate rigorous collaboration with the Pomona community—a philosophy borne out by this spring’s exhibit on “Black Ecologies in Contemporary American Art.”

The show explores relationships among Black people, land and the environment, and features a variety of student contributions curated by J Finley, associate professor of Africana studies; Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities and chair of the English Department; and Victoria Sancho Lobis, the Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton Museum of Art and associate professor of art history.

As longtime collaborators with the Benton, Finley and Sherrard-Johnson often bring their classes for showings curated specifically for them. Sancho Lobis had the idea in 2023 to create this latest exhibition, inspired by Sherrard-Johnson’s Black Ecologies course.

“[The class] is very much about the body within the environment and the kind of porous boundaries between the two,” says Sherrard-Johnson. “It’s about how the social and political, as well as climate change, impact the health and flourishing of bodies in those spaces.”

This past fall, Finley’s class—Unruly Bodies: Black Womanhood in Popular Culture—explored images of Black women across popular culture, while Sherrard-Johnson’s course—Race, Gender, and the Environment (co-taught with Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies)—took an intersectional approach to environmental studies.

Students from both classes visited the Benton vaults to help select works for the exhibition that spanned a range of mediums, including photographs, paintings and sculptures.

Reflecting on the experience, Amirah Lockett ’28 says, “I was able to combine my love for art with what I learned from the course and the artworks themselves: appreciating the artists’ different experiences and how they represent those experiences through their work.”

Onlookers admire Firelei Baéz’s Atabey (or change the body that destroys me). Photo credit Carrie Rosema

In addition to being part of the curatorial process, the students created most of the object labels—texts that provide information about the objects on display. Both Finley and Sherrard-Johnson assigned label writing assignments in their classes, and Finley also organized a workshop on label writing by Brittany Webb, a curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

“My main objective was to create a narrative that I felt truly conveyed the history, emotions and culture of the Black experience,” says Taylor Parks ’27. Isaiah Dawson ’26 adds, “Co-writing a label for one of the pieces in the exhibit deepened my engagement with the historical themes of the artworks.”

After months of preparation, Sherrard-Johnson says she was “very emotional” seeing the show for the first time. Finley also was appreciative of the opportunity to curate an exhibit with her students.

“One thing I really like to do in my classes is have a creative component,” says Finley. “But I had never done something like involving them in the creation of an exhibition. I always tell the class, ‘We’re not just consuming the knowledge.’ This was an opportunity for us to put that into action.”

Skylar Funk ’10

Rock festivals like Coachella require massive resources and, thus, end up with enormous carbon footprints. Coachella’s 600,000 daily attendees translate into an estimated net total of 700,000 gallons of diesel over two weekends—or enough gas to power 1,250 cars for an entire year.

Merritt Graves ’20 and Skylar Funk ’10 have spent the better part of a decade trying to play a role in minimizing concerts’ environmental impacts: 2026 will mark the 10th anniversary of their Sunstock Solar Festival, a California-based nonprofit indie-rock festival powered by multiple solar generators. The festival has drawn major rock bands like Ra Ra Riot and Wavves, as well as cumulative crowds of thousands over the years at locations such as Los Angeles and University of California at Berkeley.

Skylar Funk ’10 and Merritt Graves ’20

Graves, who was in Funk’s class year but officially graduated 10 years later, met Funk in Pomona’s environmental analysis program. The duo spent much of their college years participating in climate activism and playing music, including in their band Trapdoor Social, which toured with The B-52s and just signed their first record deal.

In 2013, they used crowdfunding proceeds to put solar panels on the roof of the L.A. nonprofit Homeboy Industries, which works with former gang members and ex-convicts. Two years later, they invested in a solar-paneled touring trailer outfitted with a 3.5-kilowatt inverter to power their subwoofers, speakers, amps, instruments and LED lights—which set the stage for not just Sunstock Solar Festival, but participation in environmental rallies like Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles.

This spring, Funk graduated with a master’s degree in popular music teaching and learning from the USC Thornton School of Music. During his time at USC, Funk found his way into its Student Sustainability Committee, and in his second year, worked as its graduate co-chair.

“Sky takes a collaborative, open-minded approach in his interactions with stakeholders, which ensures the students’ perspective is heard,” Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple recently told USC Today. “He also leads students to propose well-researched solutions rather than taking the simpler route of voicing concerns. Through this added value, along with demonstrating persistence, Sky helps the students earn respect and accomplish their long-term sustainability goals.”

Graves is now a fiction writer, while Funk hopes to continue to integrate sustainability themes into his music teaching. As he told USC Today, “I’m in search of kernels of wisdom and knowledge that we can use to find that magical recipe for [climate] action.”