| Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1990 |
| Location | 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90024 |
| Type | Art museum |
| Director | Ann Philbin |
| Website | www.hammer.ucla.edu |
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.
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The museum was founded by Armand Hammer, the late CEO of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, as a venue to exhibit his extensive art collection. Hammer died 15 days after the museum opened to the public in November 1990. 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 79,000-square-foot (7,300 m2), three-story 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[1], leading to settlement limiting construction and endowment costs.[2]
The Hammer opened November 28, 1990, with a exhibition of work by the Kazimir Malevich; the show originated at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and subsequently travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[3] The museum has since presented key single-artist and thematic exhibitions of historical and contemporary art 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.[4] 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.[5]
The Hammer contains a small collection of Impressionist 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. In 2007, the museum was chosen by Colorado developer Larry Marx and his wife, Susan, to inherit their collection of drawings and other works on paper by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and other major figures of the post-World War II era.[6] 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 Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden and Grunwald Center, a 45,000-piece graphic arts trove.
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 Wilder 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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10] National Public Radio affiliate KCET hosts a podcast of selected Hammer Conversation programs; the series is also syndicated through iTunes.
In 1994, UCLA assumed management of the Hammer Museum, with the Armand Hammer Foundation retaining some control, including a "reversionary clause",[11] 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.[12] 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.[13]
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.[14] In 1999 Ann Philbin, previously director of The Drawing Center in New York, was named director.
In 1994, the Hammer Museum made headlines by selling Leonardo da Vinci's 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.[1] 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.
At the Hammer Museum, 2010 attendance was an estimated 175,000, up from 150,000 in 2009. The museum does not provide exact figures as it does not have a computerized ticketing system.[15] According to the museum's director Ann Philbin, the museum has “defined our primary audience as artists”.[16]