I heard art history major has little presence in Pomona, but is it just unpopular or really weak? How are the professors? Does the consortium provide with more courses and programs? Anyone who’ve taken courses on AH or know someone majoring in AH…?
The art history department is very small (four professors, I think), but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just like Pomona as a school derives many benefits from its small size (e.g. much closer-knit student body, more personal attention/support, etc.), so too many of the art history majors I know love the fact that the department is so small.
The department is certainly not under-resourced (with the largest endowment per student of any liberal arts college, hardly anything at Pomona is). They regularly bring in guest lecturers from around the world, host fun department bonding events with free food (a croquet match this year, I think), and make good use of the Pomona College Art Museum (a fantastic resource).
Regarding the professors, some of them have fantastic reviews, whereas others have pretty mediocre reviews. This isn’t unusual for Pomona (or anywhere else, for that matter), but the small size of the department may make it more likely that you’ll be stuck taking a class with someone you’d rather avoid, especially if you’re dead-set on a particular sub-field or topic in AH.
Pitzer and Scripps both offer art history courses of their own, which helps mitigate the problem from the previous paragraph. As with pretty much everything else (a strong statement but it’s true), the Claremont Consortium allows you to have the best of both worlds.