Gene Sasse is putting Pomona’s art scene on the world map, and all from a museum located in a basement.
The Sasse Museum of Art, which occupies a below-ground space in downtown, has 5,400 followers on Instagram and 1,100 subscribers to its weekly newsletter. “Our newsletter is opened in 60 countries,” Sasse, the founder and director, tells me.
Venues in South Korea and Ireland have done shows in collaboration with the Sasse. With any call for entries for one of its theme shows, at least 10% of the responses are from abroad.
Why the interest?
“I wish I knew!” Sasse says with a surprised laugh. The start might have been when he was invited to participate remotely in an art talk in France, a seed of interest in Pomona that seems to have germinated.
For all that, locals are largely unaware of the museum’s existence. Its physical space at 300 S. Thomas St. draws a modest 3,000 visitors per year.
The Sasse is in the Progress Lofts, a 1931 Art Deco building once home to the Progress-Bulletin newspaper. The Tessier family, the owners, have donated the basement space for an art gallery for some three decades.
Sasse four years ago succeeded George Cuttress’ Progress Gallery in the nearly 3,000-square-foot basement, once part of the newspaper’s printing operation.
Sasse put his own stamp on the bunker-like basement, erecting more interior walls to allow for more art.
“When I got here, it was just two big rooms. I needed more galleries to have more exhibits,” Sasse explains. “Sometimes we have four exhibits. Sometimes we have three.”
Right now there are three: a multimedia group show by 22 artists who teach in colleges or universities around Southern California; a solo exhibit by fabric artist Sally Nicholson; and “Sasse at 75,” a photography display by the museum namesake.
“Sasse at 75” consists of 19 images, all in black and white, from around California, places as disparate as the Huntington Library and Trona, Disney Concert Hall and Death Valley. Sasse says they are examples of his interest in landscape, architecture and botanicals and that the subjects tend to find him.
Sasse, yes, turned 75 on Aug. 5. A Pomona native, he’s made a living as a commercial photographer since 1973. He’s also taught photography at Riverside City College and Mount San Antonio College as an adjunct professor.
The nonprofit museum began in 2013 as the Inland Empire Museum of Art, with shows around the area, including at Fairplex and in Sasse’s Upland studio.
“L.A. has a lot of museums. In the Inland Empire, most of them are centered on college campuses. I started it because I felt a need,” Sasse explains. According to its website, the museum hosts at least 24 exhibitions a year. Admission is free.
“I try to put on good exhibits,” he told me in a conversation last year. “It’s not the same artists over and over again.”
In the move to Pomona in 2022, the name Inland Empire Museum of Art was dropped on a friend’s advice as sounding too broad.
Sasse went with his own name. It’s pronounced “Sassy.”
“I tell people I was born that way,” jokes Sasse, telling me with a sigh that as a boy, the name resulted in “constant harassment.” It’s German, not French, for those tempted to give it a more elevated pronunciation.
“It’s a different name. It sets us apart,” Sasse says.
The holdings consist of some 2,000 objects, most of them photographs. Mostly, though, the Sasse exists as a venue for showing contemporary art. On that count, it may be a mixed success.
The current shows are intriguing, representing painting, ceramics, embroidery, tapestry, sculpture and photography. And Sasse knows how to lay out shows, with a visual “grabber” on far walls to pull visitors forward and get them to circulate.
Ambitiously, Sasse has put together nearly 50 exhibit catalogs, which are sold via Amazon to buyers all over the world.
Yet the in-person audience is small, and it might actually be shrinking.
Perhaps the biggest platform is Pomona’s monthly Art Walk, known as Second Saturday, which began in 1994, making it an Inland Empire pioneer. It’s now marking 32 years.
While Art Walk draws a lot of foot traffic downtown, much of the energy is at sidewalk level and from entertainment rather than traditional galleries.
“When we started, on Art Walk we would get 200 people. Now we get 50,” Sasse says ruefully.
“On the street would be better than in a basement,” Sasse says of his location. “But people say they like the vibe down here.”
I descended the stairs on a recent Sunday afternoon, wanting to see “Sasse at 75,” and also to see Sasse at 75. The occasion was the museum’s monthly Art Talk.
A panel consisted of Sasse and two artists from the main show, Nada Fakhreddine and Jonathan Puls, plus moderator Kendall Johnson. I waited for Johnson to start asking questions, but he didn’t. He got the audience of 14, many of them regulars, to ask the questions.
What developed over the next hour was a free-form conversation, much of it about artificial intelligence.
One man predicted that AI would become a routine part of everyday life. He remembered, as an early adopter of a (rather large) cell phone, how people would ask him what it was and quiz him skeptically, “Why do you need that?” Now even kids carry phones, he noted.
In the audience, one person decried AI as “disruptive.” Another countered, “Is a calculator disruptive?” The reply: “Does a calculator use tremendous amounts of electricity and water?”
Sasse is pro-AI. Taking the long view, the photographer recalls how some said the camera would “ruin” painting. Or, during his own career, that digital cameras would ruin large-format photography. AI “is a tool,” like the computer program Photoshop, he says.
In fact, he uses ChatGPT and Perplexity, two AI programs, to help him write the museum wall text and his newsletters. The most popular, “Sunday Morning Inspiration,” is, perhaps ironically, about creativity.
As for “Sasse at 75,” it’s on view through Sept. 26, with receptions from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday (Aug. 16) and Sept. 20. You too can meet Sasse at 75.
From the personal essay that accompanies the exhibit: “Sasse first picked up a camera in 1968, and has not stopped looking since.”
If you can’t find David Allen’s column, keep looking each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.