CLAREMONT, CA.- The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College announced the appointment of Justine Bae Bias as the museum’s new assistant director for engagement, effective immediately. Formerly the communications and engagement manager, Justine will now oversee all events and programs, including community outreach, student engagement, and K–12 education outreach and exhibition programs.

“Justine’s new position will allow her to continue to do what she loves and excels at: serve our communities from the inside out and back again,” said Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the museum. “This position and title fully reflect everything that Justine has done for and with the Benton since she started her career here.”

Justine joined the then–Pomona College Museum of Art in 2012 after completing her MFA at Cal State LA; she came to the Benton originally intending to fulfill the fieldwork requirements for her degree. Her first project was supporting the performance and programs component of It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969–1973, the museum’s contribution to the first Pacific Standard Time initiative from the Getty in 2011–2012. These programs included Pomona alumni Judy Chicago, James Turrell, and John White. Since 2013, Justine has worked with every contemporary artist hosted by the Benton on programs to support their exhibitions both within and outside of the Pomona College community.

Becoming full-time permanent staff as a museum coordinator the same year, Justine became communications and engagement manager in 2019, just before the museum’s rebirth as the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in a brand-new purpose-built facility designed by Machado Silvetti and Gensler. As the communications and engagement manager, Justine was involved in some of the museum’s largest and most visible projects to date: the overhaul of the website, the transition to the Benton’s new name and graphic identity, and the development of more robust digital communications. She was also instrumental to the museum’s operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, spearheading the Benton’s first reservation system and production of a wealth of digital content.

In her capacity as communications and engagement manger, Justine has additionally forged relationships with dozens of community and campus partners. Among her many contributions in this regard were the art activities she designed for—and distributed to—temporarily housed migrant children at the Pomona Fairplex in 2021; the now annual Print Pomona Art Book Fair; and the creation of the Native resources garden outside the museum, originally developed for the Benton’s exhibition Continuity: Cahuilla Basket Weavers and their Legacies and a lasting testimony to the reciprocal relationships with Native communities that the exhibition inspired.

“I’m excited to continue developing at the Benton as the assistant director for engagement,” said Bae Bias. “As a resident of LaVerne, I know first-hand what an impact local arts programming has on our academic and residential communities, and as a parent I know how important it is to instill a love of the arts in children. I’m looking forward to contributing to all of these aspects—and more—of the Benton’s work.”