Museums - Pomona College Museum of Art, Montgomery Art Center

The fine art collections of Pomona College are housed in the Pomona College Museum of Art. The museum is located in the Montgomery Art Center, which was inaugurated in 1958 and named for the late Gladys K. Montgomery, a Pomona trustee and Los Angeles civic leader. Among important holdings are the Kress Collection of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian panel paintings and more than 5,000 examples of pre-Columbian to twentieth-century American Indian art and artifacts, which have been assembled over the last seventy years. This collection is particularly rich in Californian and Southwestern basketry, Southwestern ceramics (both pre-Columbian and historic), and beadwork of the Plains and Great Lakes.
The Pomona collection of Native American art owes its existence to Robert J. Bernard, who was active with the college from 1917–1963, when he retired as president. In 1929 he persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Tibbet to donate their collection of Native American art to the college. Other major donations followed, including that of Emil P. Steffa, a Pomona alumnus (class of 1899) whose meticulously documented collection of California Indian baskets has lasting historical importance.