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The Hammer Museum is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. It is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur-industrialist Armand Hammer to house his personal art collection, the museum has since expanded its scope. The Hammer Museum hosts over 300 programs throughout the year, from lectures, symposia, and readings to concerts and film screenings. As of June 2025, the museum's collections, exhibitions, and programs are free to all visitors.
The second iteration of Made in L.A. in 2014 took over the entire space of the museum to feature work by more than 30 different artists and collectives. The 2014 exhibition was organized by Hammer chief curator Connie Butler and independent curator Michael Ned Holte.
The most recent Made in L.A. exhibition, Acts of Living, was organized by curators Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez and Luce Curatorial Fellow Ashton Cooper, features 39 artists, collectives, and organizations representing a cross-section of Los Angeles.
The 2009 exhibition Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection at the Hammer exhibited selections from Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson's gift to the Hammer Contemporary Collection. The gift of fifty sculptures by 29 Los Angeles artists represents a significant milestone in the Hammer's commitment to collecting the works of Southern California artists.
In 2012, the Hammer showcased selections from the Susan and Larry Marx Collection. The exhibition was made possible by a substantial gift from longtime museum supporters Susan and Larry Marx and includes more than 150 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by over 100 international artists from the post-World War II period. The collection includes examples of Abstract Expressionism on canvas and paper by the American artists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston as well as works by contemporary artists including Mark Bradford, Rachel Whiteread, Mary Heilmann, and Mark Grotjahn among others.
Highlights from the contemporary collection include: The Battle of Atlanta: Being the Narrative of a Negress in the Flames of Desire - A Reconstruction (1995) by Kara Walker, Untitled (2007) by Mark Bradford, Migration (2008) by Doug Aitken, Untitled #5 (2010) by Lari Pittman, Mirage (2011) by Katie Grinnan, Ruby I (2012) by Mary Weatherford, Mimus Act I (2012) by Mary Kelly.
Notable recent acquisitions to the Hammer Contemporary Collection include Suzanne Lacy's Three Weeks in May (1977), as well as major works by Lisa Anne Auerbach, Fiona Connor, Bruce Conner, Jeremy Deller, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Friedrich Kunath, Tala Madani, Allan McCollum, Robert Overby, Martha Rosler, Sterling Ruby, Allen Ruppersberg, Barbara T. Smith, William Leavitt, and Eric Wesley.
In 1988 the Grunwald Center received a bequest of over 850 landscape drawings and prints from the collection of Los Angeles–based architect Rudolf L. Baumfeld. The Baumfeld Collection includes important examples of European landscapes from the 16th to 20th-centuries and includes pure landscapes, as well as views of architectural ruins and urban scenes. The Eunice and Hal David Collection, bequeathed to the Grunwald Center by lyricist Hal David and his wife Eunice, is a collection of 19th and 20th-century drawings by European and American artists. Selections from the collection were exhibited at the Hammer in 2003. The 2014 exhibition showcased works from the Elisabeth Dean Collection of 19th and 20th-century works on paper. The collection of approximately 900 prints and illustrated books is among the most significant gifts received by the Grunwald Center in recent years.
The Grunwald Center is also home to several important collections of Los Angeles–based contemporary artists. The Grunwald Center's collection features over 1,000 works by Sister Corita Kent, an influential pop printmaker and social justice activist, including rare preparatory studies and sketchbooks. Additionally, the Grunwald maintains an archive of the first twenty years of June Wayne's influential Tamarind Lithography Workshop, offering a rare overview of contemporary print-making in Los Angeles. Jointly acquired by the Grunwald and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Grunwald Center maintains a complete archive of prints by Los Angeles publisher Edition Jacob Samuel which documents the activity of master intaglio print-maker Jacob Samuel. Highlights from the archive were exhibited in the 2010 exhibition Outside the Box: Edition Jacob Samuel, 1988-2010.
A research and education resource, the Grunwald Center study room is available by appointment to faculty, students, and members of the public.
Highlights from the Grunwald's collection include: Melencolia I (1514) by Albrecht Dürer, Christ Preaching (1652) by Rembrandt van Rijn, Maple trees at Mama, Tekona Shrine and linked Bridge (1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige, Les Grands Baigneurs (1896) by Paul Cézanne, Le Repas Frugal (1904) by Pablo Picasso, and Entropia (review) (2004), by Julie Mehretu.
The 72 object collection comprises works by Deborah Butterfield, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, Auguste Rodin, and David Smith. A fully illustrated catalogue, including scholarly entries for each artist, was published by in 2007 by the Hammer Museum.
Selections from the collection are on permanent display in the Hammer Museum's third floor galleries. Highlights of the collection include: Juno (ca. 1665-1668) by Rembrandt van Rijn, The Education of the Virgin (1748-1752) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, El Pelele (ca. 1791) by Francisco Goya, Salome Dancing before Herod (1876) by Gustave Moreau, Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881) by John Singer Sargent, Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin (1889) by Paul Gauguin, and Hospital at Saint-Remy (1889) by Vincent van Gogh.
Highlights from the Daumier and Contemporaries Collection include Daumier's Le passé - Le present - L'avenir (1834), Un Avocat Plaidant, (ca. 1845) Nadar élevant la Photographie á la hauteur de l'Art (1862), and Don Quixote et Sancho Panza (1866-1868).
The award originally consisted of a catalogue and a $100,000 cash prize and was decided by public vote after a jury of experts narrowed the 60 participants to five finalists. In 2014 the Hammer announced it was offering three awards in conjunction with Made in L.A. 2014: The Mohn Award ($100,000), the Career Achievement Award ($25,000)—both of which are selected by a professional jury—and the Public Recognition Award ($25,000), which is awarded by popular vote among exhibition visitors. All three awards are again funded by Jarl and Pamela Mohn and the Mohn Family Foundation.
Past recipients are:
Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, the New York-based architect responsible for the Dallas Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center, the building housing the museum was conceived as a Renaissance palazzo with galleries centered around a tranquil, interior courtyard and a relatively austere exterior profile.
In 2006, architect Michael Maltzan designed the Billy Wilder Theater and the museum's café. Michael Maltzan Architecture also designed the John V. Tunney Bridge, which opened in February 2015. The pedestrian bridge, named in honor of John V. Tunney, longtime Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hammer Museum, connects the upper level galleries over the Hammer Courtyard.
Hammer died less than a month after his namesake museum opened to the public in November 1990, leaving the fledgling institution mired in litigation over its financing and prompting new legal battles regarding the disposition of Hammer's estate. While the museum's operating budget was provided by a $36 million annuity purchased by Occidental Petroleum, questions remained regarding the future of the museum's collections and the role that the Hammer family would play in its administration. In 1994, the Regents of the University of California entered into a 99-year operating agreement with the Armand Hammer Foundation to assume management of the museum, which afforded the fledgling institution a measure of stability. At that point the exhibition programs of the Wight Art Gallery, UCLA's existing museum, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, the university's print collection, were moved to the Hammer.
In 2001, Hammer Foundation president Michael Armand Hammer threatened to trigger a contract clause establishing the museum with University of California regents, giving it the right to reclaim the collection and some endowment funds, if strict donation rules were breached.Christopher Knight (18 October 2023), In blow to L.A. art scene, Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin to retire in 2024 Los Angeles Times. Led by board chairman John V. Tunney and John Walsh, a settlement between the UC Regents and the Hammer Foundation in 2007 formally ended long-simmering disputes over the Hammer collection's ownership and established new guidelines for its display that allowed the museum more space for exhibitions and a growing contemporary collection. As part of the agreement, the foundation received 92 paintings—including Chaïm Soutine’s The Valet (1929)—together valued at $55 million, while the museum retained more than 100 paintings by Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and othersm, valued at $250 million, and 7,500 works by Honoré Daumier and his contemporaries, valued at $8 million.Suzanne Muchnich (19 January 2007), Hammer divided yet strong Los Angeles Times.Christopher Knight (18 October 2023), In blow to L.A. art scene, Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin to retire in 2024 Los Angeles Times.
In 2017, the Hammer opened its renovated third-floor galleries; in 2018, it debuted a newly designed courtyard performance space along with a gallery for new media art.Deborah Vankin (29 November 2022), L.A.’s Hammer Museum expansion, two decades in the making, sets date for the final reveal Los Angeles Times. The Annenberg Terrace for education, installations and programming, featuring ping pong tables and couches, opened in 2019. In 2022, a works-on-paper gallery and a study room for the museum’s Grunwald Center Collection opened, along with the museum’s renovated store.Deborah Vankin (29 November 2022), L.A.’s Hammer Museum expansion, two decades in the making, sets date for the final reveal Los Angeles Times. The Lynda and Stewart Resnick Cultural Center opened in 2023, thanks to a $30 million gift from the couple-the largest individual gift in the museum's history.
Despite the institutional hurdles that earned it the nickname "America's vainest museum" at its inception, the Hammer is now widely acknowledged as "a hot spot for contemporary art and ideas and a venue for serious exploration of overlooked historical subjects." Under current leadership, the Hammer's budget has grown from $5 million to roughly $20 million annually, with a full-time staff of over 100.
In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum was temporary closed and laid off its 150 part-time student employees.
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. By 2020, the museum will use its bond portfolio, valued at about $55 million, to purchase the building that houses the museum and Occidental's former headquarters.
In addition, the Hammer Museum's annual Gala in the Garden serves as a fundraiser for the museum. The 2019 edition raised $2.7 million.Jori Finkel (October 15, 2019), ‘I can divide my life into before and after Judy Chicago’: Gloria Steinem reveals how the artist changed her thoughts about art at Hammer Museum gala The Art Newspaper. Recent museum honorees include Robert Gober, Tony Kushner, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Judy Chicago, Jordan Peele and Charles Gaines and Chase Strangio.
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