Free Summer at the Hammer Museum
The Museum offers free admission to all exhibitions, collections, and public programs from Memorial Day to Labor Day
From Memorial Day to Labor Day (May 30 through September 3, 2006), the Hammer Museum offers free admission to its exhibitions, collections, and public programs as part of Free Summer. Due to the wildly popular response to 2005's Free Summer, the Museum has again waived admission during the summer months to give Los Angeles residents even greater access to the Hammer's outstanding exhibitions, resourceful collections, and full slate of engaging public programs.
Free Summer at the Hammer also marks the beginning of new collaborations with Indie 103.1FM and Los Angeles Film Festival, which add more variety to an already enriching summer schedule. Programs featured during Free Summer include outdoor concerts and film screenings, readings for children, and lectures, conversations, and discussions on popular culture, politics, and the arts.
Temporary exhibitions on view during Free Summer include The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America (through August 20), the acclaimed exhibition that charts the development of one of the greatest collections of modern art in America with 240 works by over 100 artists; Hammer Projects by artists Jesper Just (through July 2); Walead Beshty (through July 23); Monique van Genderen (through July 30); Elliott Hundley (through August 27); Animations: Nathalie Djurberg, Brent Green, and David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd (opening July 8); Angela Dufresne (opening July 29); and Christine Nguyen (opening August 17). In addition, the Armand Hammer Collection, which is always on view at the Museum, is free of charge.
2006 SUMMER PUBLIC PROGRAMS
HAMMER CONVERSATIONS
Hammer Conversations is an ongoing series of provocative dialogues pairing today's most interesting people for engaging and spontaneous discussions on culture, science, and the arts. On
Monday, June 12, 7pm, the Museum presents a conversation with DJ, producer, and LA Film Festival Artist in Residence Danger Mouse and Jason Bentley. Bentley is a Los Angeles DJ who hosts KCRW's Metropolis and KROQ's Afterhours, two radio shows featuring progressive pop and electronic music; Friday, June 23, 7pm, the Museum presents a conversation on the nature of film criticism between Neil LaBute and Kenneth Turan. LaBute is the writer and director of In the Company of Men and the forthcoming film The Wicker Man. Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Morning Edition. On Wednesday, July 12, 7pm, the Museum hosts a conversation with Jenny Shimizu and Eric Nakamura. Shimizu is a super model, garage mechanic, and TV personality, and Nakamura is the editor and publisher of Giant Robot magazine. Finally on Wednesday, July 19, 7pm, the Museum hosts comic artist Adrian Tomine and Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Japanese comic legend for a conversation on comics and graphic novels on the evening before San Diegos annual Comicon.
OUTDOOR COURTYARD EVENTS
Inspired by the exhibition The Societe Anonyme, the Museum will screen landmark films of the 1920s starring some of the finest actresses of the era and rarely seen comedic shorts from the same period in the series The Female of the Species: Screen Sirens of the '20s, presented on six consecutive Friday nights in July and August. The series begins July 7 with Pandora's Box (1928) starring Louise Brooks and continues July 14 with Siren of the Tropics (1928) starring Josephine Baker; July 21 with Piccadilly (1929) starring Anna May Wong; July 28 with Salome (1923) starring Alla Nazimova; August 4 with It (1927) starring Clara Bow; and finally ending on August 11 with Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) starring Brigitta Helm.
SloMo Video Festival on Saturday, August 12 at 8pm featuring 100, one-minute slow motion videos by 85 filmmakers and video artist from around the world including Matmos's Snails Playing a Theremin, Scott Arford's Static One, Merci Hammon's Slomosquito, among many others.
The Museum is pleased to announce Also I Like to Rock, The Indie 103.1 New Music Showcase, a new collaboration that presents free rock concerts by some of the most buzz worthy bands from the U.S. and the U.K. Concerts kick off July 6 at 8pm and continue on Thursday nights throughout July. Each concert is hosted by Indie's DJ Paul V. The series begins July 6 with Silversun Pickups, who play from their debut album Carnavas, and Run Run Run, who perform dreamy and abrasive rock like their cover of Mazzy Star's Fade Into You. On July 13, Bangkok Five play garage and punk from their new album Who's Gonna Take Us Alive and The Ringers liven up the traditional rock quartet with punk-inspired vocals in their high-energy performance. On July 20, The Colour plays from their new EP Devil's Got a Holda Me with Rocco DeLuca and the Burden, playing a combination of blues and soul from the debut album I Trust You To Kill Me, out on Kiefer Sutherland's record label Ironworks. The series concludes on July 27 with an all-star line-up featuring Shiny Toy Guns, whose synthpop electronica and honest rock sounds draw comparisons to 80s bands like Depeche Mode and New Order, and People in Planes from Wales, whose debut album As Far as the Eye Can See was produced by Supergrass's Sam Williams.
The summer music series continues with JazzPOP, three nights of concerts in August by jazz musicians and improvisers informed and inspired by pop music. The series begins August 3 at 8pm with Kneebody, a horns and rhythm section jazz band whose sound is driven by tuneful pop layers and rock energy. It continues on August 10 with Pyeng Threadgill, daughter of influential instrumental musician Henry Threadgill, whose classic jazz diva voice compliments her clever arrangements influenced by R& B, soul, punk, and alternative music. The series concludes on August 17 at 8pm with an exciting evening with Nels Cline Singers, the instrumental jazz power trio that is led by prolific composer, guitarist, and member of rock band Wilco, Nels Cline.
HAMMER FORUM: Revolutions and Subcultures
On Saturday, July 8 at 7pm, the self-proclaimed punk journalists, Blakkbox will report on the front-lines of dangerous and unpredictable regions around the world by telling anecdotes of their first-hand experiences with resistance movements and creative subcultures from Beirut to the Hamptons. Blakkbox is J. Winters (PhD student in Islamic Studies), Charlie Smith (English professor), NT Sterling (researcher on resistance movements), and Andrea Keller (architect, design professor at Otis College of Art + Design and University of Southern California). They have reported on their findings for alternative magazines like Vice, Anthem, and Paper. Blakkbox also run a gallery space of the same name in downtown L.A.
HAMMER READINGS AND HAMMER LECTURES
The Museum hosts Sunday Afternoons, a free series of readings and workshops for children ages 8 to 13, on creative ways to write about and understand visual art, co-organized with 826LA. The series continues on July 23 at 12pm with Frank Portman, author of King Dork and member of the band Mr. T Experience, who teaches about songwriting; August 6 at 12pm with Al Madrigal, stand-up comedian who teaches children how to write funny stories; and September 10 at 12pm with Peri Gilpin, best known as Roz Doyle on Frasier, who teaches about writing and performing scripts of children's book characters. Reservations are required and can be made by emailing rsvp@826la.com or calling 310-305-8418 by the Thursday prior to each workshop.
The Museum also hosts the lecture "Art Life" by curator and author Lawrence Rinder on June 27 at 7pm. Rinder is the Dean of Graduate Studies at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco and the author of Art Life, a work that investigates how the intersection of material, idea, and image creates meaning in some of the most compelling artworks of the last decades.
The Hammer Museum presents an evening with comic artists of Kramer's Ergot on July 29 at 9pm to celebrate the release of Kramer's Ergot 6 (KE6), the latest comics compendium from editor Sammy Harkham. The night features a variety of performances, discussions, and presentations by artists, musicians, and scholars that include New York City painter and Raw contributor Jerry Moriarty, live musical performances by Providence-based Kites (aka Christopher Forbes.) and The Mystical Unionists (Becky Stark and Ron Rege, Jr.), and films by Paper Rad.
LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL AT THE HAMMER
The Hammer Museum announces a new collaboration with Film Independent's Los Angeles Film Festival. Screening over 175 narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and music videos, the festival also presents a series of dynamic discussions about relevant issues facing the film industry at the Museum. Events include a Conversation with Danger Mouse and Jason Bentley on June 12, 7pm, Conversation with Neil LaBute and Kenneth Turan on film criticism on June 23 at 7pm (see details above Hammer Conversations); June 25 at 5pm, Unshown Cinema: Inside the World of "The Films that Got Away" on why distributors avoid releasing unconventional films with Robert Koehler (Daily Variety), Scott Foundas (LA Weekly), Monte Hellman (filmmaker), Greg Laemmle (Laemmle Theaters), Laura Kim (Warner Independent Pictures), Ziggy Kozlowski (Block-Korenbrot Publicity), and others; June 28 at 7pm, Crossing Borders: Latino Indiewood on Latin American filmmakers and how they have influenced and been affected by American cinema.
2006 SUMMER EXHIBITIONS
The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America
Through August 23, 2006
The Hammer Museum is the debut venue for the major traveling exhibition The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America featuring approximately 240 works by more than 100 artists who shaped the development of modern art in the early 20th century. The legendary Societe Anonyme, Inc., was founded in 1920 by Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray to promote contemporary art among American audiences.
The exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints from the Societe Anonyme's exceptional collection of European and American art dating primarily from 1920 through 1940 featuring such renowned artists as Josef Albers, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Arthur Dove, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Paul Gauguin, Arshile Gorky, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Lger, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Stella, among others.
Related public programs:
Concert
Saturday, July 15, 6pm
Tones in Shadow: The Viennese Society for Private Musical Performance (1919-24)
Solo and chamber works from Arnold Schoenberg's Verein fr musikalische Privat-auffuhrungen, the Viennese salon known for its presentations of groundbreaking modernist repertoire. Composers to include Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, and Karol Szymanowski.
Party
Friday, August 18, 7-11pm
Hammer Bash!
The Museum stays open late to mark the last chance to catch The Socit Anonyme. The evening features free admission, cash bar, and DJ music.
HAMMER PROJECTS
Jesper Just
Through July 2, 2006
Danish artist Jesper Just makes videos that explore gender roles and the way in which cultures generate and understand them. Using lush scenery, glossy production, and social codes of Hollywood movies, Just subverts traditional male characters by presenting men who overtly express their emotions. With little, if any, dialogue, the actors unpredictably sing in chorus, embrace, and weep, creating suggestive, yet enigmatic situations.
Walead Beshty
Through July 23, 2006
Walead Beshtys work comments on the history of photography, on the powers and limitations of the medium, and on the ways in which it both depicts and transforms contemporary culture. His past series have shown desolate shopping malls and abandoned housing developments, eroticized consumer goods and strangely un-erotic nudes. His project at the Museum will focus on an abandoned Iraqi diplomatic mission in Berlin.
Related public program:
24 Hour Armageddon: A Cold War Slumber Party
Saturday, June 17, 12pm through Sunday, June 18, 12pm
24 hours of sci-fi screening presenting post-apocalyptic films including Omega Man (1971), The Day After (1983), and The Day of the Triffids (1962).
Gallery talk by the artist
Tuesday, June 20, 7pm
Monique van Genderen
Through July 30, 2006
Los Angeles artist Monique van Genderen creates large-scale wall paintings that make use of adhesive vinyl with various reflective, translucent, and matte finishes. Solid architectural surfaces are transformed into changeable spaces through the play of light on the materials, which shift, disappear, and reappear as one passes by. Inspired both by the tradition of abstract painting and contemporary graphic design and computer generated patterns, van Genderens work challenges the expectations of painting.
Elliott Hundley
Through August 27, 2006
Los Angeles artist Elliott Hundley creates drawings and collages from thousands of cut-up magazines, personal photographs, and a variety of commonplace found objects including feathers, strings, and twist ties. With titles that often refer to classical drama and mythology, each work is a fantastical world full of cryptic imagery and meaning. In the Hammer Museums Vault Gallery, Hundley will exhibit large-scale constructions made from delicate papers and ephemera affixed to wooden sculptural forms.
Related program:
Gallery talk by the artist
Saturday, July 8, 2pm
Animations: Nathalie Djurberg, Brent Green, and David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd
July 8 - September 10, 2006
Using lo-fi handmade techniques, the artists in this Hammer Project experiment with various materials to create animated shorts about bizarre and enchanting characters. Swedish-born Nathalie Djurberg moulds clay figures and places them in unexpected and surreal scenarios; Brent Green, a self-taught animator from Pennsylvania, tells odd imaginary tales using ink, transparency film, and live music tracks; and David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd explore the darker recesses of the human psyche using simple pen lines to illustrate a sordid and hilarious tale of a lost soul in search of his identity.
Angela Dufresne
July 29 - October 22, 2006
Angela Dufresnes large canvases depict fantastical landscapes populated by strange modernist structures. Dufresnes brushstrokes, painted with a loose, frenetic energy, add to the sense of alienation and anxiety her compositions produce, yet they also translate the forward-looking idealism espoused by modernist architects like Le Corbusier or Frank Lloyd Wright. She presents utopias gone awry in color schemes that range from vivid acidic hues to more natural earthy tones.
Christine Nguyen
August 16 - December 3, 2006
Christine Nguyens works on paper are influenced by the artists memories, landscape imagery, and fantastical visions. She combines a variety of media and photographic processes, creating multilayered forms that move freely from representation to abstraction. Natural elements like trees, rivers, and whimsical animals share space with fanciful boats and villages, all of which seem to exist in a universe with its own secret logic and energy. Nguyens work will be installed on the lobby walls.
HAMMER MUSEUM INFORMATION
For current program and exhibition information call 310-443-7000 or visit www.hammer.ucla.edu.
Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 11am-7pm; Thursday, 11am-9pm; Sunday, 11am-5pm; closed Mondays, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.
Admission: FREE, May 30 - September 3, 2006
Regular admission: $5 for adults; $3 for seniors (65+) and UCLA Alumni Association members; free for Museum members, students with identification, UCLA faculty/staff, and visitors 17 and under. The Museum is free for everyone on Thursdays.
Location/Parking: The Museum is located at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, at Westwood Boulevard. Parking is available under the Museum. Rates are $3 for the first two hours with Museum validation.
Hammer Museum Tours: For group tour reservations and information, call 310-443-7041.
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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