Hammer Museum
Encyclopedia
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, or the Hammer Museum as it is more commonly known, is an art museum
in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California
. It is operated by UCLA's School of the Arts and Architecture
.
, the late CEO of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation
, as a venue to exhibit his extensive art collection. Mr. Hammer died 15 days after the museum opened to the public in November 1990. Mr. Hammer was a Los Angeles County Museum of Art
board member for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1968, and during this time had pledged his extensive collection to the museum. To LACMA's surprise, Hammer instead founded his own museum, built adjacent to Occidental's headquarters and designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes
.
The 79000 square feet (7,339.3 m²) building was built for $60 million and the original endowment fund was $38 million. Hammer persuaded Occidental to fund the entire cost on the grounds that the museum would improve the company's prestige. Occidental shareholders sued for waste of corporate assets.
produced by its curators or prepared in collaboration with other institutions. It has developed a reputation of organizing invitational shows of artists whom the public - including the dealers - has never heard of, including Lee Mullican
, Robert Overby and Lee Bontecou
. The Hammer also has roughly ten Hammer Projects each year, offering international and local artists with a laboratory-like surrounding to create new work or to show existing work in a fresh context. In 2010, the Hammer announced founding, in partnership with nonprofit gallery LAXART, of a Los Angeles Biennial, which will begin in 2012 and feature artists from the city and surrounding areas in institutional and found spaces.
and Post-Impressionist
art. The museum holds over 7500 works by French satirist Honoré Daumier
, the largest collection outside of Paris. In recent years, the Hammer has become well known for its collection of contemporary art
works on paper. It also has fine paintings by Rembrandt, Titian
, and Chardin
. The Hammer today manages a complex group of art holdings, including the collections amassed by Armand Hammer, and UCLA's Murphy Sculpture Garden and Grunwald Center, a 45,000-piece graphic arts trove.
Theater opened at the Hammer Museum in late 2006, after a $5 million gift in 2004 from Audrey L. Wilder, the widow of Billy Wilder, enabled the museum to resume building a 300-seat theater left unfinished at Hammer's death. Its 2006 opening coincided with the centennial of Wilder's birth. The venue houses the Hammer's public programs and is also the new home of the UCLA Film & Television Archive's well-known cinematheque
. The museum also hosts a dialog series called "Hammer Conversations." Participants have included the writers Joan Didion
, Jonathan Lethem
, George Saunders
, the filmmaker Miranda July
, comedians Jeff Garlin
and Patton Oswalt
, playwright and screenwriter David Mamet
, magician Ricky Jay
, artists Tom Morello
and Sam Durant
, and many others. Most notably, 2,000 people packed the museum's outdoor courtyard to hear Gore Vidal
speak about the Iraq war the night before the bombing began in March 2003. National Public Radio affiliate KCET
hosts a podcast of selected Hammer Conversation programs; the series is also syndicated through iTunes.
On January 19, 2007 the Hammer Museum and the Armand Hammer Foundation agreed to dissolve their relationship, dividing the remaining 195 objects which founded the museum; the foundation retaining 92 paintings valued at $55 million, while the museum retaining 103 objects, valued at $250 million. In 2020, the museum will use its bond portfolio, valued at about $55 million, to purchase the building that houses the museum and Occidental's headquarters.
Henry Hopkins, then director of the Wight gallery and professor in the Department of Art, became director of the Museum until his retirement in 1998. In 1999 Ann Philbin, previously director of The Drawing Center in New York, was named director.
Codex Leicester
to Microsoft
founder Bill Gates
for $30.8 million. The Codex Leicester was one of Mr. Hammer's proudest acquisitions, purchased in 1980 for $5.12 million, one which he unsuccessfully tried to rename the Codex Hammer. Most museums have collection
guidelines for deaccessing art, which require profits from sales to be used for future acquisitions. The Hammer Museum alternatively sold the 72-page scientific notebook to fund the museum's exhibitions and programs.
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. It is operated by UCLA's School of the Arts and Architecture
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture
The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture is a professional school at the University of California, Los Angeles. The school plays a vital role in the cultural and artistic life of the campus and the community. Through the six degree-granting departments, it provides a full range of course...
.
History
The museum was founded by Armand HammerArmand Hammer
Armand Hammer was an American business tycoon most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran for decades, though he was known as well as for his art collection, his philanthropy, and for his close ties to the Soviet Union.Thanks to business interests around the world and his...
, the late CEO of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation
Occidental Petroleum
Occidental Petroleum Corporation is a California-based oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and South America...
, as a venue to exhibit his extensive art collection. Mr. Hammer died 15 days after the museum opened to the public in November 1990. Mr. Hammer was a Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
board member for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1968, and during this time had pledged his extensive collection to the museum. To LACMA's surprise, Hammer instead founded his own museum, built adjacent to Occidental's headquarters and designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes was a American architect.Barnes was born in Chicago, Illinois into a family he described as "incense-swinging High Episcopalians", consisting of Cecil Barnes, a lawyer, and Margaret Helen Ayer, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for the novel Year of Grace...
.
The 79000 square feet (7,339.3 m²) building was built for $60 million and the original endowment fund was $38 million. Hammer persuaded Occidental to fund the entire cost on the grounds that the museum would improve the company's prestige. Occidental shareholders sued for waste of corporate assets.
Exhibitions
The Hammer presents key single-artist and thematic exhibitions of historical and contemporary artContemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
produced by its curators or prepared in collaboration with other institutions. It has developed a reputation of organizing invitational shows of artists whom the public - including the dealers - has never heard of, including Lee Mullican
Lee Mullican
Lee Mullican was a painter and art teacher, and an influential member of the Dynaton Movement. He was a member of the UCLA art faculty from 1962 to 1990. He married Luchita Hurtado; their son Matt Mullican is a New York City based artist; their son John Mullican is a Los Angeles based writer and...
, Robert Overby and Lee Bontecou
Lee Bontecou
Lee Bontecou is an American artist who was born 15 January 1931 in Providence, Rhode Island. She attended the Art Students League of New York from 1952 to 1955, where she studied with the sculptor William Zorach. She received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Rome in 1957-1958 and the Louis...
. The Hammer also has roughly ten Hammer Projects each year, offering international and local artists with a laboratory-like surrounding to create new work or to show existing work in a fresh context. In 2010, the Hammer announced founding, in partnership with nonprofit gallery LAXART, of a Los Angeles Biennial, which will begin in 2012 and feature artists from the city and surrounding areas in institutional and found spaces.
Collections
The Hammer contains a small collection of ImpressionistImpressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and Post-Impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
art. The museum holds over 7500 works by French satirist Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
, the largest collection outside of Paris. In recent years, the Hammer has become well known for its collection of contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
works on paper. It also has fine paintings by Rembrandt, Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...
, and Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...
. The Hammer today manages a complex group of art holdings, including the collections amassed by Armand Hammer, and UCLA's Murphy Sculpture Garden and Grunwald Center, a 45,000-piece graphic arts trove.
Program
The Hammer is a cultural center that contributes an assorted range of free public programs six evenings a week throughout the year, including lectures, readings, symposia, film screenings, musical performances, and other events. The Billy WilderBilly Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
Theater opened at the Hammer Museum in late 2006, after a $5 million gift in 2004 from Audrey L. Wilder, the widow of Billy Wilder, enabled the museum to resume building a 300-seat theater left unfinished at Hammer's death. Its 2006 opening coincided with the centennial of Wilder's birth. The venue houses the Hammer's public programs and is also the new home of the UCLA Film & Television Archive's well-known cinematheque
Cinematheque
A cinémathèque is a French word used to refer to a film archive with small cinemas that screens particularly classic and art-house films.- History :...
. The museum also hosts a dialog series called "Hammer Conversations." Participants have included the writers Joan Didion
Joan Didion
Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...
, Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
, George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders is a New York Times bestselling American writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and GQ, among other publications...
, the filmmaker Miranda July
Miranda July
Miranda July is a performing artist, writer, actress and film director. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with high school friend Johanna Fateman, called Snarla.- Background :Miranda...
, comedians Jeff Garlin
Jeff Garlin
Jeffrey "Jeff" Garlin is an American stand-up comedian, actor, producer, voice artist, director, writer and author, best known for his role as Jeff Greene on the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm...
and Patton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and voice actor. He is best known for portraying Spencer Olchin in the popular sitcom The King of Queens, voicing Remy from the film Ratatouille and Thrasher from the Cartoon Network original series Robotomy.-Early life:Oswalt was born...
, playwright and screenwriter David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
, magician Ricky Jay
Ricky Jay
Richard Jay Potash , better known by the stage name Ricky Jay, is an American stage magician, actor, and writer. He is a sleight-of-hand expert and is notable for his card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and stage patter.-Life and career:...
, artists Tom Morello
Tom Morello
Thomas Baptiste "Tom" Morello is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist best known for his tenure with the bands Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, his acoustic solo act The Nightwatchman, and his newest group, Street Sweeper Social Club...
and Sam Durant
Sam Durant
Sam Durant is a multimedia artist whose works engage a variety of social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing American history, his work explores the varying relationships between culture and politics, engaging subjects as diverse as the civil rights movement, southern rock music,...
, and many others. Most notably, 2,000 people packed the museum's outdoor courtyard to hear Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
speak about the Iraq war the night before the bombing began in March 2003. National Public Radio affiliate KCET
KCET
KCET, channel 28, is an independent, non-commercial public television station licensed to Los Angeles, California, USA. KCET's studio is located on West Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and its transmitter is atop Mount Wilson. Al Jerome is the current CEO and President, serving since 1996.KCET was...
hosts a podcast of selected Hammer Conversation programs; the series is also syndicated through iTunes.
Management
In 1994, UCLA assumed management of the Hammer Museum, with the Armand Hammer Foundation retaining some control, including a "reversionary clause", granting the foundation rights to reclaim the art collection and some of the endowment funds. The museum had long desired to eliminate these clauses. Operating money came from a bond portfolio, UCLA's existing art budgets, private donations and revenue from the museum. In 2009, the museum operates on an annual operating budget of $14 million, 10% to 12% of which comes from the university.On January 19, 2007 the Hammer Museum and the Armand Hammer Foundation agreed to dissolve their relationship, dividing the remaining 195 objects which founded the museum; the foundation retaining 92 paintings valued at $55 million, while the museum retaining 103 objects, valued at $250 million. In 2020, the museum will use its bond portfolio, valued at about $55 million, to purchase the building that houses the museum and Occidental's headquarters.
Henry Hopkins, then director of the Wight gallery and professor in the Department of Art, became director of the Museum until his retirement in 1998. In 1999 Ann Philbin, previously director of The Drawing Center in New York, was named director.
Controversy
In 1994, the Hammer Museum made headlines by selling Leonardo da Vinci'sLeonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
Codex Leicester
Codex Leicester
The Codex Leicester is a collection of largely scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. The codex is named after Thomas Coke, later created Earl of Leicester, who purchased it in 1717...
to Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
founder Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
for $30.8 million. The Codex Leicester was one of Mr. Hammer's proudest acquisitions, purchased in 1980 for $5.12 million, one which he unsuccessfully tried to rename the Codex Hammer. Most museums have collection
Collection (museum)
A museum is distinguished by a collection of often unique objects that forms the core of its activities for exhibitions, education, research, etc. This differentiates it from an archive or library, where the contents may be more paper-based, replaceable and less exhibition oriented...
guidelines for deaccessing art, which require profits from sales to be used for future acquisitions. The Hammer Museum alternatively sold the 72-page scientific notebook to fund the museum's exhibitions and programs.