![]() ![]() ![]() A shiver goes down your spine when the grainy film’s fuzzy fog of contaminated smoke and water envelops a naval ship, all to a haunting synthesizer score by Terry Riley and Patrick Gleeson. One disconcerting sample: Around the corner from a 17-panel Ben Sakoguchi painting is Bruce Conner’s half-hour film “Crossroads,” a slow-motion montage of government footage of 1950s nuclear test explosions in the Pacific. It’s a generally impressive array, shrewdly installed. The contemporary collection, however, is the primary reveal. ![]() There’s a bit more to go, including construction of a path between that lobby and the bank-gallery, in what might be a final construction phase. On the patio adjacent, a monumental Sanford Biggers bronze sculpture of a Zeus-like figure melds African and American forms. The Hammer Museum revamp, which opens March 26, features new entrances, more gallery space, immersive installations, a sculpture terrace and more.Ī redesigned and welcoming lobby and a former bank office transformed into a gallery are also among the changes, currently housing commissioned immersive installations from Chiharu Shiota and Rita McBride. Now, a capacious new entry at the highly trafficked corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards, one of the nation’s busiest automotive intersections, awaits the eventual opening of a subway stop across the street, planned for an unspecified date before the 2028 Olympics.Įntertainment & Arts Photos: A first look at the Hammer Museum’s two-decade, $90-million reinvention It has been implemented in modest steps - the addition of a handsome theater here, an elegantly helpful bridge spanning the courtyard there, new administrative offices in the adjacent Occidental tower acquired by UCLA, study-storage for the remarkable (and hitherto underutilized) Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, an attractive shop and restaurant (of course) and more. Philbin’s arrival in 1999 led to development of a master plan by architect Michael Maltzan two years later. Architecturally, it has been playing catch-up ever since. ![]() (Those elements, of course, remain.) The original Hammer, in a weird augury of the recently unveiled Orange County Museum of Art’s new facility, opened to the public before the building was finished. The horizontally striped black-and-white marble façade is part Postmodern architectural pastiche of buildings like the art-filled Duomo in Siena, Italy, and part simplistic foil to the vertically striped panels of white marble and dark windows of the former Occidental Petroleum headquarters to which the museum is awkwardly attached. Hammer, who peevishly overturned decades’ worth of pledges to donate his corporate-minded art collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he was a trustee, envisioned a modernized Renaissance villa with upstairs galleries built around a courtyard, suitable for his self-perception as a corporate Medici. Indeed, the idea of beginning to form a contemporary collection is tied to the updated and expanded building.Īn inadequate 1990 structure hastily thrown together in his dying days by the museum’s namesake, the late industrialist Armand Hammer, required major fixes. All were acquired since 2005, when the museum decided to add contemporary art to its small and uneven trove of European and American works by Rembrandt, John Singer Sargent, Vincent van Gogh and other blue-chip historical artists. “ Together in Time: Selections From the Hammer Contemporary Collection,” assembled by director Ann Philbin, chief curator Connie Butler and four members of the curatorial staff, pulls together 73 paintings, sculptures, videos and mixed-media works. To unveil its latest, and perhaps most dramatic, architectural renovation and expansion, the Hammer has now launched a fleet of small exhibitions and single-artist shows, as well as one biggie. ![]()
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