The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College opens two new exhibitions, “Open Sky” and “Roy Thurston: Recent Work,” Thursday, August 15 at 120 W. Bonita Ave., Claremont. Both will be up through January 5, 2025. An opening reception and panel for both will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, September 7.

The Benton is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday, closed Monday through Wednesday. Admission is free.

“Open Sky” spotlights contemporary artists Xin Liu, Agnieszka Polska, Marcus Zúñiga, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, who use light and space as both material and subject, according to the exhibit description.

“Taking a cue from James Turrell’s ‘Dividing the Light’ at Pomona College — a keystone work in the Benton Museum of Art collection and the only public Skyspace in Southern California — ‘Open Sky’ explores the potential of somatically affective work to investigate our embodied relationship to the universe,” the description read. “The artists in this exhibition … fluidly engage scientific and artistic languages to stage experiential explorations of what it means to be human at this precarious moment.”

“Roy Thurston: Recent Work” puts the sculptures of Thurston in conversation with the “limits and legacies” of the Light and Space movement, a Southern California-based art movement in the 1960s related to op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction, according to the press release. It features new work by Thurston, including a 10-foot by 5-foot installation for the Benton’s double-height south atrium.

“Thurston’s practice, loosely defined as sculptural, evades easy categorization in its multifaceted engagement of the viewer. Thurston uses massive rectangular forms often crafted from aluminum panels, which are then coated with pigmented acrylic polyurethane or silicone surfaces,” read the release.

For more information visit pomona.edu/museum/exhibitions.