Culture

Please Don’t Kiss the Art

Urban Light, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Urban Light, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Urban Light, the very Instagrammable installation of 202 historic streetlamps created by the late artist Chris Burden ’69 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gets a lot of love. Maybe a little too much love.

The 2008 sculpture needs a paint job and is one of 23 works selected by the Bank of America Art Conservation Project for grants “for the preservation and conservation of the world’s cultural treasures” in 2023.

“Conservators will apply protective paint layers that have been extensively tested on all the streetlamps, ensuring that substances such as lipstick, permanent marker and dye can be easily cleaned from their surfaces,” the bank announced. Other works selected for preservation grants included 15th-century Armenian manuscripts, Andy Warhol’s Oxidation series and two paintings by Paul Cézanne.

President G. Gabrielle Starr Joins Academy of Arts and Sciences

Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr photographed next to the Academy of Arts and Sciences logo

There was a distinct Pomona College presence at the induction ceremonies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in September, as College President G. Gabrielle Starr formally joined the distinguished academy led by David Oxtoby, who preceded her as Pomona College president.

Starr, a national voice on access to college for students of all backgrounds as well as the future of higher education, was selected for her role in educational and academic leadership. Also a literary scholar and neuroscientist, she took office as the 10th president of Pomona College in 2017.

Elected to the academy in 2020, Starr was inducted in a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, along with influential artists, scientists, scholars, authors and institutional leaders from the classes of 2020 and 2021 after delays due to the pandemic. Others inducted included singer Joan C. Baez, former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and author Ann Patchett.

Other Sagehens entered the academy alongside Starr. Alumna Adela Yarbro Collins ’67, an internationally renowned and respected scholar of the New Testament, also was elected in 2020. She is the Buckingham Professor Emerita of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School. Alumnus Thomas McDade ’91, elected to the academy in 2021, is a biological anthropologist specializing in human population biology and is the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

New inductees signed the academy’s Book of Members, which already includes numerous Sagehens. Among them are scientists Jennifer Doudna ’85, Sarah Elgin ’67, J. Andrew McCammon ’69 and Tom Pollard ’64; author Louis Menand ’73, art historian Ingrid Rowland ’74, artist James Turrell ’65, journalist Joe Palca ’74 and developmental psychologist Henry Wellman ’70.

The academy is led by Oxtoby, inducted in 2012 and named president in 2018. He served as president of Pomona College from 2003 until 2017. Starr became the third Pomona College president to join the academy. The late David Alexander, Pomona’s president from 1969 to 1991, was inducted in 2006.

Chartered in 1780, the academy has counted Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson among its members, as well as 20th-century luminaries such as Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King Jr. The current membership includes more than 300 Nobel laureates, some 100 Pulitzer Prize winners and many of the world’s most celebrated artists and performers.

Band’s Name Is No Typooo

Last winter, a brewery near campus was looking for a band to play as an opening act. A group of Claremont Colleges musicians quickly pulled one together and gave the event’s organizers the band name “Tea Room” as a placeholder.

“They spelled ‘room’ with three o’s,” says saxophonist Dylan Yin ’23, one of several musicians from Pomona’s jazz ensemble invited by keyboardist Alex Arguelles PZ ’24 to join the impromptu group. “We looked at it, we looked at each other and we nodded.”

Tea Rooom became the official name, though the bandmates joke that they should add another extra o after every show. Each performance since has reflected the quirkiness and versatility of the band.

A 2022 Tea Rooom performance with saxophonist Dylan Yin ’23 at the mic. Photo by Lillian Visaya PZ ’24

A 2022 Tea Rooom performance with saxophonist Dylan Yin ’23 at the mic. Photo by Lillian Visaya PZ ’24

“We’re not afraid to try songs we’ve never played before live, take audience recommendations or remix songs that already exist,” says drummer Jeremy Martin ’25, adding that the bandmates try to have a sense of humor in everything they do.

“We’re serious musicians who don’t take ourselves too seriously,” he says.

Trumpet player Nico Santamaria ’25 attributes their improvisational tendencies to the group’s jazz background. Vocalist Cece Malone PZ ’24 and guitarist Amya Bolden PZ ’24 appreciate that the spontaneous approach doesn’t focus on technicalities. It’s a constant learning experience, personalizing performances and interacting with each new audience.

“Music is all about expressing yourself and seeing if other people will relate to that emotion,” Arguelles says. “We can be whatever people need us to be. That’s quite lovely.”

A year later, the band is still playing gigs and has added guitarist Aden Cicourel ’26 as Bolden takes a more part-time role. Says Martin: “I wish I could give you a better idea of how many o’s we’re on, but I think we may have lost track!”

—Oluyemisi Bolonduro ’23

Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College, is back.

sagecast logo

Recorded in the studios of KSPC 88.7 FM, Pomona’s campus radio station, the fifth season offers a chance to listen in on vibrant intellectual conversations with Pomona College professors and hosts Patty Vest and Marilyn Thomsen. Featured faculty include Rosalia Romero (art history), Gary Kates (history), Ellie Anderson (philosophy), Pierangelo De Pace (economics) and Rose Portillo (theatre). Listen at pomona.edu/sagecast or look us up on the podcast sites of Apple, Google or Spotify.

Closing Time at Rhino Records

Rhino Records, a Claremont Village staple since 1974, has closed its doors. That elicited a Twitter lament from Professor of Politics David Menefee-Libey (@DMenefeeLibey) and responses from Aditya Sood ’97 and Brian Arbour ’95.

But save your tears. A rent increase at the Yale Avenue location isn’t putting Rhino out of business, just out of walking distance: The store is moving to a new location in nearby Montclair.

Payton Lecturer: Soledad O’Brien

Award-winning broadcast journalist Soledad O’Brien gave the 2022 Payton Distinguished Lecture in April, explaining how maintaining an anti-bias perspective in journalism means acknowledging our own biases.

“You need other people, other diverse voices, to push for things because your own gut is often wrong.”

—Soledad O’Brien

Theatre Reimagined

No two productions of a play are ever quite the same—that’s one of the things that makes theatre a living art. Variations in direction, performance and design can give an old play a facelift, but now and then, there are reinterpretations so extreme that they give a play a whole new relevance and meaning. That was the case last fall for both of the major productions undertaken by Pomona’s Theatre Department—the musical Pippin and Lolita Chakrabarti’s Victorian play within a play, Red Velvet.

A scene from Pomona’s production of Red Velvet

A scene from Pomona’s production of Red Velvet

Red Velvet is the true story of the American black actor Ira Aldridge who came to London in the 1800s and was cast to play the great Shakespearean role of Othello at a time when there were public riots in the streets over the abolition of slavery. Chakrabarti chose to portray Aldridge as a tragic figure in his own right, driven mad by rejection as the play comes to a close.

But director Kenshaka Ali and his students thought the playwright had it all wrong. So they turned the play on its head—subverting the text to transform the main character, in Ali’s words, “from one who was victimized and who died a maddened or demented, enraged old man to one who indeed was a victor instead.”

A scene from Pomona’s production of Pippin

A scene from Pomona’s production of Pippin

In the case of Pippin, which debuted on Broadway in the 1970s, the work of Stephen Schwartz, Roger O. Hirson and choreographer Bob Fosse, the transformation was mostly visual and musical, using hip-hop and the Japanese animation style known as anime to give the play a more contemporary look and sound—and, according to guest director Tim Dang, one that is far more familiar to the students of Generation Z.

“I don’t even know if hip-hop and anime have ever been integrated,” says Dang. “There might be a couple of anime stories that do incorporate a hip-hop kind of culture. But it’s a very interesting mix because anime originally started in Japan and hip-hop originated in Brooklyn. We’re in this together and creating something that I think is very unique for Pomona College.”

Smart Summer Reads From 12 Pomona College Professors

These books written and edited by 11 Pomona College faculty members this year aren’t the lightest summer reads… but they could definitely land on the shortlist of the smartest.

Read the Smart Summer Reads From 12 Pomona College Professors story on the Pomona’s website.

Emerging Playwright: Mary Kamitaki ’15

Mary Kamitaki ’15Mary Kamitaki ’15 started doing theatre when she was little, a budding “backyard” playwright, performing plays based on fairy tales with her friends, complete with a bedsheet as a stage curtain. The curtain didn’t close in her childhood — and it’s not closing anytime soon. Now the play she wrote, “Southernmost,” is running at the Playwright’s Arena Theatre in Los Angeles, her first professional production.

Kamitaki’s “Southernmost” is about a coffee farmer in rural Hawaii and his daughter who returns home for the first time in years with her girlfriend. Shortly after she arrives, their home is threatened by a lava flow and they have to decide to abandon their land or stand their ground. Critics have noted the emerging playwright’s talent.

Stage and Cinema writes, “Kamitaki constructs the play with a sure sense of place and character.” “Audiences can rest assured that while “Southernmost” is in town, 80 minutes of entertaining, engaging theater are a sure bet on the Playwrights’ Arena stage,” reviews Stage Scene L.A.

While Kamitaki’s childhood in Hawaii suggested stage promise and combined her two favorite things, reading and playing, her double major at Pomona may come as a surprise: math and media studies. For Kamitaki, a liberal arts education made life bigger, not smaller. She says it allowed her to pursue all the things she was interested in and helped her find the path to playwriting. Kamitaki had never actually written for theatre until she came to college.

“It wasn’t until my senior year that I figured out what I wanted to do. But the other disciplines I studied in the meantime were fulfilling and continue to deepen my understanding and appreciation of the theatre world now.”

While the disciplines she studied were disparate, she says, “I do think there’s a kind of mathematical way I approach playwriting and dramaturgy now in terms of the flow of logic and framing of ideas and worlds.”

While at Pomona, Kamitaki took a writing class with the late Professor of Theatre Art Horowitz who introduced her to contemporary theatre and gave her the space to explore dramatic writing, she says. Before that class she never really knew there were still people alive writing plays.

“I knew about people like Shakespeare and Chekhov, but no living playwrights, and I had never even considered writing to be a real option for my future.”

Professor of Theatre Giovanni Ortega was another major influence during her time at Pomona. He directed her in “Spring Awakening” her senior year and taught a directing class she took. Kamitaki says he reignited her love for theatre and showed her it was possible to be a working theatre artist.

That real possibility became a real pursuit. Immediately after graduating from Pomona, Kamitaki went to USC for graduate school to study dramatic writing, which included playwriting and screenwriting. Since completing the program last year, she has been working and writing with New West, Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA.

The writing process is constantly evolving for Kamitaki. Usually she starts with a character or a world. In the case of “Southernmost” she started with a language: Pidgin, also known as Hawaiian Creole English. She says that for her everything serves as inspiration. Family. Relationships. Reality TV. Whatever’s bothering or scaring her or making her mad, she says. Reading new work from fellow writers also pushes her to go further and reach higher.

Kamitaki calls the experience of seeing her work on stage as both exciting and “kind of bizarre.”

“This play, in particular, is very personal, and seeing it designed, directed, built and performed by other people—and then witnessed by an audience—is kind of like having an out-of-body experience. It’s very fulfilling but also kind of disorienting.”

We Are Scientists’ Megaplex

The Brooklyn, New York, based indie rock band We Are ScientistsThe Brooklyn, New York, based indie rock band We Are Scientists—the creation of bassist Chris Cain ’99 and guitarist Keith Murray ’00, who’ve now been performing together for almost 20 years—released the group’s sixth full-length album last April from 100% Records—a new collection of original pop songs, including “One In, One Out” and “Heart Is a Weapon.”