The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College will open 'Mavis Pusey, Restless: From the Collection of Ian White' on August 22, 2026, presenting what the museum describes as a comprehensive overview of the artist’s work. The exhibition is scheduled to remain on view through January 3, 2027 at the Benton Museum of Art in Claremont, and the museum says it will include nearly 100 works, many of them previously unseen.
According to the museum, the show brings together paintings, drawings, watercolors, gouaches and prints from the collection of Ian White. It is organized by guest curator Paulina Alvarez and will be accompanied by a full-color scholarly publication. The Benton says the project offers the first opportunity to view approximately 100 previously unseen works from White’s significant holdings of Pusey’s oeuvre.
Mavis Pusey (1928–2019) is identified by the Benton as a painter, printmaker, designer, educator and draftsperson whose geometric abstraction was characterized by syncopated linear compositions and layered explorations of color. The museum’s exhibition text says her practice was shaped by her life and work in Jamaica and New York City, and that she continued to investigate specific visual motifs across her career. The exhibition also places emphasis on her working methods, rather than isolating a single medium or period.
The Benton says the installation begins with early works and Pusey’s embrace of an abstract visual language, then moves into galleries devoted to design processes in different printmaking disciplines. Those sections will include printing matrices alongside preliminary drawings and related editioned prints. The exhibition culminates with Pusey’s paintings in formats of varying scale and diverse color palettes, offering a structured view of how her process developed across media.
The museum’s text also situates Pusey’s career within a broader transatlantic and New York context. After studying fashion design in New York in the late 1950s, Pusey lived in London and Paris in the mid- to late 1960s before moving to Chelsea in lower Manhattan, where she contributed to the city’s intellectual and artistic life for two decades. The Benton notes that she also collaborated with print workshops including the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and Benjamin Wigfall’s Communications Village.
The exhibition arrives amid renewed interest in Pusey’s life and work, according to the museum. It is supported by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund and the Janet Inskeep Benton ’79 Endowed Fund, with additional support for the catalogue from a special allocation from Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr and funding from the Rembrandt Club of Pomona College and Claremont. The Benton lists the exhibition dates as August 22, 2026, to January 3, 2027.
