The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles revealed this week that its longtime director, Ann Philbin, will retire. Stepping down from her put up on 1 November 2024, after 25 years on the helm, Philbin is commonly credited with having remodeled a small college museum (initially constructed to accommodate Previous Masters work owned by the oil tycoon and collector Armand Hammer) right into a world-class establishment for modern artwork.
“When the historical past of the Hammer Museum is written, there will probably be a transparent line drawn—earlier than Annie Philbin, and after Annie Philbin,” the museum’s board chair, Marcy Carsey, mentioned in a press release. “She has guided a whole transformation of the museum—its services, its assortment and its exhibitions and programmes, which she has elevated in each manner—whereas redefining the connection of artwork museums to their communities and their society.”
Adam D. Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Artwork, told The New York Instances: “Annie will go down as one of many nice museum administrators of her technology.”
Within the time since Philbin left her position as director of the Drawing Heart in New York with a purpose to lead the Hammer in January 1999, annual attendance on the Hammer has greater than quadrupled and its assortment has ballooned to greater than 50,000 works, with a particular deal with modern artwork and social justice. This spring, the Hammer premiered its expanded galleries and public areas, having added greater than 40,000 sq. ft to the museum over the course of an intensive, 24-year and $90m renovation.
Throughout Philbin’s tenure, the museum launched quite a lot of new programmes, together with Hammer Initiatives (exhibitions highlighting rising artists) and the Made in LA biennial. Philbin additionally expanded public programming on the museum, which now hosts 300 occasions per yr, similar to readings, film screenings, live shows and lectures, in addition to in depth arts training programmes with native colleges. Among the many exhibitions Philbin has curated on the Hammer are Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective (2003) and Lee Mullican: Drawings (2000), and she or he has overseen quite a few travelling exhibitions—just lately, Joan Didion: What She Means (2022), curated by Hilton Als—and retrospectives by artists together with Bridget Riley, Ulysses Jenkins, Paul McCarthy, Jimmie Durham and Mark Bradford.
In 2014, it was beneath Philbin’s path that the Hammer did away with its admission fees for good with the slogan: “Free for LA. Free for you. Free for good.” “The truth that the Hammer is free permits it to change into an everyday gathering house for folks,” Philbin informed The Artwork Newspaper earlier this yr.
“We’ve all the time mentioned that the artists of Los Angeles are our core viewers,” Philbin mentioned in a press release, “and I believe that in the way in which we’ve got innovated in our programmes and remodeled our services, we’ve got created a real ‘artists’ museum’ for them.”
Philbin’s final exhibition will probably be Breath(e): Towards Local weather and Social Justice in autumn 2024, a part of the Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. A seek for her alternative will start early subsequent yr.
