The Hammer Museum Presents: Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960 – 1980
Oct. 2 - Jan. 8, 2012
The Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310/443.7000
hammer.ucla.edu
The Hammer’s contribution to the expansive Pacific Standard Time (see article at right) focuses on African American artists in the city during the Civil Rights movement. Organized by the Hammer and curated by Columbia University professor Kellie Jones, Now Dig This! chronicles and celebrates the multicultural history of Los Angeles through 140 works by 35 artists “rarely shown” in a museum setting, with early pieces by now well-established artists and works once considered “lost.” Featured artists include Melvin Edwards, Senga Nengudi, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, Betye Saar, and Charles White.
The ardent philanthropic support that the Hammer Museum has earned since opening its doors in 1990 is attributable to many factors, but all paths lead to perhaps its greatest benefactor of the past decade -- its visionary director, Annie Philbin. Were she merely following a path rather than paving it, Philbin might still be in New York, the proverbial lift-off point for those seeking to soar in the rarefied air of the art world intelligentsia.
But Philbin’s Gotham flair, cultivated through an East Coast upbringing, has transitioned seamlessly into a progressive Angeleno countenance. Her business card may identify her as Ann Philbin, but her ebullient charm and warm handshake are undeniably Annie. Raised outside Boston, Philbin also lived in Washington, D.C., when her father, a lawyer, went to work for the Kennedy administration. She earned her B.F.A. in fine arts from New York University and her M.A. in curatorial studies and arts administration from the University of New Hampshire. After a nine-year run as director of New York’s The Drawing Center, Philbin found herself drawn west; specifically, to the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center in Westwood. Almost a dozen years later, she feels more at home here than ever.
The situation into which Philbin entered was unique: A foundation (Armand Hammer Foundation), a learning institution (UCLA), and a corporation (Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum), comprised a three-pronged entity by which the museum was governed. With such lofty interests to be served, Philbin still had no doubts from the beginning where her allegiance would lie. “We wanted our first targeted audience to be the artists that lived here in L.A.,” she says. “We knew that if we became interesting to them, the circle would just get bigger. Artists are great ambassadors and their opinions are highly valued. We wanted them to spread the word about what we were up to and then we knew the collectors, donors, and public would follow. That was a real strategy on our part.”
Her shrewd artistic decisions regularly buck convention (“The answer is yes before it’s no,” she succinctly states), and she enjoys the fact that the Hammer Museum is not beholden to making artistic decisions based on blockbuster appeal, a luxury many larger institutions do not have. With a full schedule of free, eclectic programming built around a gallery that carries academic clout, Philbin and her staff have built a brand that attracts a devoted following in creative pockets dispersed throughout L.A. (Culver City, Echo Park) and the world (New York, Berlin).
The Hammer has cultivated its audience with care, and the dollars of support keep streaming in. When she arrived, Philbin felt it important to organize an annual fundraising event, as she had done at The Drawing Center. “Galas are not just about raising money,” she insists. “They’re about raising friends and relationships.” Skeptics predicted that the L.A. crowd would, true to form, RSVP and then fail to show. Philbin was thrilled--and relieved--when $100,000 was raised. Today, she proudly acknowledges that the Hammer gala is looked forward to with anticipation in the art community. “Every fall we sell out and now we’re raising well over $1 million a year for our programs, just in that one evening.”
“...you have to be more assertive and entrepreneurial in this town...nothing really happens unless you make it happen.”
The museum’s annual budget ($15 million) has nearly tripled since Philbin arrived in 1999. “Like most museums, we have to raise a substantial amount of money every year as we are not fully supported by the Armand Hammer Foundation or UCLA,” she explains. “In fact, we have to raise more than one third of our annual budget from individual donors, foundations, and corporate donors. The rest of our budget comes primarily from endowments and some from the university.”
Although “Culture Center” was dropped from the museum’s name a few years back, the term remains integral to the museum’s mission. Philbin has said she views the Hammer as UCLA’s “research and development arm” of the arts. “Our public programs span a huge range -- science, politics, art, music, literature, you name it. Anything that is the purview of UCLA we take as our purview as well. We are not just an art museum but a cultural center with education and discovery as core values.”
An increasing number of arts organizations have followed the Hammer’s lead and are positioning themselves as cultural centers as well. The developing consensus that the creative richness of the city is found in the sum of its parts is evidenced by the leadership of some of Philbin’s peers: Michael Govan (LACMA), Jane Pisano (Museum of Natural History), and Deborah Borda (L.A. Philharmonic) share a progressive vision that is redefining Los Angeles to a new generation of artists. “The artists who are graduating from USC and UCLA are staying here,” observes Philbin. “Artists make the scene. You can have as many galleries and museums as you want, but if you don’t have a healthy culture of people actually making work in a city, then you don’t have a real art scene.”
The heart of the Hammer, Philbin says, beats within the Billy Wilder Theatre, a 295-seat state-of-the-art facility that hosts a full schedule of free lectures, symposia, film series, and other events. The theatre, which was little more than “a concrete bunker with four steps” when she arrived in 1999, was finally completed in 2006 with the help of a $5 million gift from Audrey L. Wilder, widow of the famed director.
Like its founder, the history of the Hammer is complex. A LACMA board member for years, billionaire businessman and philanthropist Armand Hammer threw the art world a curve ball in 1988 when he announced he wanted to build his own museum and culture center to house his impressive art collection. The Armand Hammer Museum and Culture Center opened in November 1990, adjacent from Occidental Petroleum’s Westwood headquarters. Three weeks later, Hammer died, and certain aspects of the museum remained unfinished due to lack of funding. In 1994, UCLA officially became a partner and assumed control of management and operations. In 2007, the museum and the Armand Hammer Foundation agreed to part company, with the bulk of Hammer’s $305-million collection, including works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and John Singer Sargent, remaining at the museum as part of the deal.
Although she won’t say the arts community follows the Hammer’s lead, Philbin notes that the Hammer was the first institution to have a public program curator. “I do think our emphasis on programming, the diversity of our programming, and the quality of our programming combined make us very different and very noticeable.”
As our time winds down, I ask Philbin to distinguish between the cultural personalities of New York and Los Angeles, having now spent a considerable amount of time as director of an arts organization in each city. “Because of the intensity and concentration of New York, so much comes at you constantly and you basically just have to filter out the experiences you want,” she begins. “In a way you have to be more assertive and entrepreneurial in this town; because of the geography, nothing really happens unless you make it happen. L.A. is also not defined by the established hierarchies that often characterize New York. There is still an openness here that allows for a sense of freedom and creativity not only among the artists working in L.A. but also among those of us running and imagining the future of the city’s institutions.”
Helping the Hammer
Six membership levels range from Individual ($50) on up to Hammer Patron ($2,500). Patrons enjoy all the benefits of lower-tiered memberships in addition to the following: Free museum admission for all accompanying guests, invitation to Patrons Luncheon, reserved seating for 4 at all Hammer public programs, visits to private homes/collections with Hammer curators, and invitations to private receptions. Visit hammer.ucla.edu/support/membership.html to learn more.
Corporate sponsorship has its perks. Corporate members can host events: The Hammer’s many public spaces can be transformed into stunning settings for large or intimate events with guest capacity anywhere from 50 to 1,200 guests. Call 310/443.7046 for more info.