Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center
DIRECTOR'S WELCOME
The Hammer Museum is a unique, cutting-edge arts institution that connects the classics and the contemporary through its varied collections, wide-ranging exhibitions, and provocative programs.
The Museum is positioned-both physically and metaphorically-at the gateway between the city of Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The Museum is the entry through which the general public can gain access to the diverse riches of the University community. Meanwhile, through the programs and exhibitions of the Museum, UCLA students gain first-hand exposure to the larger world of creative human endeavors. UCLA's mandate of pursuing cutting-edge research within the sciences and the humanities is reflected in the Hammer Museum's renowned exhibitions and programs. We approach the arts with the same quest for knowledge, discovery, and understanding that guides the scientist, engineer, or anthropologist. We see it as our mission to pursue the margins, explore unknown territory, rediscover the familiar, and take risks.
I welcome you to this virtual presentation of the Hammer. I hope that this site will inform and engage you, and that it will prompt you to visit us physically. I promise you will find many marvelous and rewarding things.
Ann Philbin
Director
History
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center (AHMACC) opened to the public in November 1990. Founded by Dr. Armand Hammer, former Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, the Museum was designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Financed by Occidental, the Museum was built adjacent to the Corporation's international headquarters in Westwood. At that time, the Museum featured galleries for Dr. Hammer's collections - old master paintings and drawings, and a collection of works on paper by Honore Daumier and his contemporaries - as well as galleries for traveling exhibitions. Dr. Hammer died in December 1990, three weeks after the opening of the Museum. Upon his death, all construction was halted and the building was never completed, leaving many spaces unfinished - most importantly, the 300-seat theater on the courtyard level.
In 1992, the Museum began negotiations with its neighbor, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), to assume the management and operations of the institution. In April 1994, the partnership with UCLA was finalized and the following year the University relocated to the Hammer its collections and the staff of the Wight Art Gallery and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The Hammer also assumed responsibility for the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, located at the north end of the UCLA campus.
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 was named director.
Today, the Museum's exhibitions present contemporary and historical work in all media of the visual arts. Through its exhibitions, the Museum is committed to promoting cultural understanding, to introducing the work of underrepresented artists, and to interpreting art of the past and present. In addition to selections from its permanent collections, the Museum has a series of temporary exhibitions, including Hammer Projects. All of the Museum's exhibitions are accompanied by extensive public programs.
In its role as a cultural center, the Museum endeavors to be a vibrant intellectual forum for the exploration of cultural, political, and social issues. To this end, the Museum offers a rich variety of public programs such as lectures, symposia, film series, readings, and musical performances.
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center is operated by the University of California, Los Angeles. Occidental Petroleum Corporation has partially endowed the Museum and constructed the Occidental Petroleum Cultural Center Building, which houses the Museum.
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