Hammer Museum

museum

PST Art’s science-meets-art extravaganza in eight superlatives

From the Getty initiative’s most widely exhibited artist to its most calming installation

Hammer Museum names new leader to succeed longtime director Ann Philbin

Zoë Ryan, currently the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will take the helm at the Hammer in the new year

Lacma, Moca and the Hammer Museum jointly acquire significant collection of works by Los Angeles artists

The three museums will share 260 pieces from the collection of Jarl and Pamela Mohn, plus recent and future acquisitions of works by local artists

Hammer Museum gala draws artists, celebrities and a faculty protest

Ann Philbin’s last pre-retirement bash also set a record for attendance and fundraising

Executive director Nicole Berry leaving The Armory Show for senior development role at Los Angeles's Hammer Museum

Frieze's search to replace Berry, who has led The Armory Show since 2017, is already underway

Rita McBride: ‘I can draw through space, and it’s infinite’

The artist’s installation at the Hammer Museum dissolves space and time with laser beams and a uniquely science-fiction-flecked optimism

'I held onto a box of Sylvie tiles that composed a psychotic, abstract cat': John Rubeli on his artful bathroom

The music executive and his wife, Stacy, are fixtures of Los Angeles’s art scene, collecting works by emerging artists and serving on boards of museums and non-profits

PST Artinterview

‘The things we make are time machines’: Cannupa Hanska Luger on his PST Art exhibitions

In three exhibitions in Southern California this September the artist imagines future worlds for Indigenous peoples — and allows children to create their own world with Velcro

In partnership withPST Art

13 shows to see in and around Los Angeles during Frieze

From important shows of Korean and Japanese contemporary art, to major surveys of Paul Pfeiffer and Joan Brown, and more

Prizesnews

Akinsanya Kambon wins Hammer Museum’s $100,000 Mohn Award

The prize, plus two others of $25,000 each, are given to artists participating in the museum’s “Made in LA” biennial

‘One of the great museum directors of her generation’: Ann Philbin to retire after 25 years leading the Hammer Museum

Philbin transformed the University of California, Los Angeles's campus museum (originally built to house an oil magnate's Old Masters) into a world-class contemporary art institution

In the latest Made in LA biennial, art and life are one

The latest edition of the Hammer Museum’s closely-watched biennial takes its title, “Acts of Living”, from a comment by revered Southern California assemblage sculptor Noah Purifoy

New 3D documentary tells the multidimensional story of American artist H.C. Westermann

Westermann’s hand-carved wooden sculptures pop off cinema screens in Los Angeles and Chicago this month

MoMA PS1 hires Hammer Museum curator Connie Butler as its next director

Butler made a similar cross-country move in 2006, when she left the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for a job at the Museum of Modern Art in New York

Bridget Riley’s drawings hold the key to her process

A travelling exhibition featuring more than 90 works on paper reveals the evolution of the British abstractionist’s approach to line, tone and colour

Los Angeles museums are conducting the US’s biggest free admission experiment

Multiple free-admission policies have been introduced in the Los Angeles area—and early results are looking promising

Museumsfeature

Goodbye pink marble, farewell 1980s office vibe: inside the Hammer Museum’s 24-year transformation

A radical renovation and expansion overseen by director Ann Philbin and architect Michael Maltzan is just weeks from completion

Eight must-see exhibitions to see during Frieze Los Angeles

From New Mexico's short-lived Transcendental Painting Group to the evolution of America through its quilts

Pioneering video artist Ulysses Jenkins on creating new images of Black life

A retrospective at the Hammer Museum chronicles the artist’s pivotal role in the history of video art

Obituariesfeature

Remembering Kaari Upson, Los Angeles artist who created The Larry Project, a seven-year-long series exploring the life of a mysterious stranger

Artist who found her subject when trespassing in abandoned houses in San Bernardino, California, and whose formal obsessions included "couches upon couches upon couches"

Like Goya, a ‘renegade’: exploring Bob Thompson’s high-octane challenges to Western art

An exhibition at the Colby College Museum of Art probes how the African-American painter defied expectations

Podcastspodcast

Return to La La Land: art is back in California

Plus, artists' album covers, and Grace Jones in the Work of the Week

The Big Review | Made in LA 2020: A Version

The Los Angeles biennial has been installed but unvisited for six months due to Covid-19 restrictions. Does it still capture our present moment?

Los Angeles museums are revving up to reopen

Amid decline in Covid-19 cases, governor lifts a closure mandate that had stirred some dissent

LA's grassroots spaces keep growing

With more alternative art galleries than ever, many are slowing down on exhibitions and stepping up on programming

US artists and museums join forces to fire up voters

Artists and activists gather in Los Angeles later this month for the first For Freedoms Congress, a three-day event to spur voter engagement

Paul McCarthy's Hammer Museum retrospective reveals lines of continuity

Los Angeles exhibition reveals how drawings have shaped the multi-media artist’s work over 56 years

Ten must-see shows during Frieze Los Angeles

From Paul McCarthy's monkey self-portrait to a New York apartment made of polyester, our picks of the city's top exhibitions

Stephen Garrett, inaugural director of the Getty and the Hammer, has died, aged 96

“Bon vivant” took over at the museum's villa and expanded its mission after J. Paul Getty died in 1976