The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles revealed this week that its longtime director, Ann Philbin, will retire. Stepping down from her submit on 1 November 2024, after 25 years on the helm, Philbin is usually credited with having remodeled a small college museum (initially constructed to accommodate Outdated Masters work owned by the oil tycoon and collector Armand Hammer) right into a world-class establishment for modern artwork.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 shall 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, advised 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 Middle 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 give attention to 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 plenty 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, equivalent to readings, movie screenings, live shows and lectures, in addition to in depth arts schooling 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 he or she has overseen quite a few travelling exhibitions—not too long ago, 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 route that the Hammer did away with its admission charges for good with the slogan: “Free for LA. Free for you. Free for good.” “The truth that the Hammer is free permits it to turn into a daily gathering house for individuals,” Philbin advised The Artwork Newspaper earlier this yr.
“We have now at all times mentioned that the artists of Los Angeles are our core viewers,” Philbin mentioned in a press release, “and I feel that in the way in which now we have innovated in our programmes and remodeled our services, now we have created a real ‘artists’ museum’ for them.”
Philbin’s final exhibition shall be Breath(e): Towards Local weather and Social Justice in autumn 2024, a part of the Getty’s PST ART: Artwork & Science Collide initiative. A seek for her alternative will start early subsequent yr.
