Hammer Appoints Douglas Fogle as Chief Curator and Anne Ellegood as Senior Curator

Both have curatorial and scholarly expertise in international contemporary art and a keen interest in the art and artists of Southern California

LOS ANGELES, CA – Ann Philbin, Director of the Hammer Museum, has announced the appointment of two new curators, effective spring 2009, filling key vacancies in the Hammer’s curatorial team. Douglas Fogle has been appointed Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Hammer. Currently the curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Fogle replaces Gary Garrels, who departed the Hammer in the fall for a position at SFMoMA. Anne Ellegood, currently curator of contemporary art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., has been appointed Senior Curator. Both curators bring a depth of scholarship and breadth of curatorial experience making them a good match for the Hammer which presents a range of exhibitions from historical to emerging art.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled. Douglas and Anne are two of the most talented curators of contemporary art working today and both have a keen interest in and affinity for artists living and working in Los Angeles,” says Ann Philbin, Director of the Hammer Museum. “With Douglas at the helm of the curatorial department, I am confident that the Hammer is entering a new and exciting chapter. I know that Anne and Douglas are both devoted to artists and the respect and affection they have earned among artists will resonate very well in the Hammer community. They are a perfect fit for us.”

Fogle and Ellegood join the Hammer’s curatorial team, under the direction of Ann Philbin, and will work closely with Cynthia Burlingham, Deputy Director of Collections and Director of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, curators Ali Subotnick and Allegra Pesenti, Jessica Hough the Director of Exhibitions and Publications, and adjunct curators Russell Ferguson and James Elaine.

Douglas Fogle. Photo courtesy the Carnegie Museum of Art.

In his new role at the Hammer, Douglas Fogle will oversee the Hammer’s curatorial and education departments – developing and organizing exhibitions, supervising the educational and public programs, building the Hammer Contemporary Collection, and overseeing the Hammer’s artist residency program and artist council. His appointment is effective May 2009.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be coming to the Hammer and to Los Angeles which I consider to be one of the most important cities for contemporary art in the world. The Hammer is among the premiere contemporary art institutions in the country and is one of the most forward thinking in terms of its commitment to and support of artists,” says Douglas Fogle. “That commitment to artists is particularly meaningful in Los Angeles which is home to one of the most vital community of artists working today. I am looking forward to continuing to build and nurture those programs and initiatives while also having the opportunity to develop historical exhibitions which will help us better understand the present context of contemporary art in the larger world.”

Since 2005 Fogle has been the curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh where he organized Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International in 2008. This monumental exhibition included work by nearly 40 artists many of whom are from Los Angeles. Other shows he organized at the Carnegie Museum include exhibitions with Luisa Lambri, Ernesto Neto, Phil Collins, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Lowry Burgess. Prior to that, Fogle was a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 1994 to 2005, where he initiated a series of exhibitions with emerging artists as well as a number of group exhibitions, including: Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962–1964 (2005); The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960–1982 (2003) which traveled to the Hammer; Painting at the Edge of the World (2001); and solo exhibitions with Catherine Opie and Julie Mehretu. Fogle has served on a number of international and national juries, has been invited to participate in numerous panels and has also served as a visiting scholar and critic at institutions around the world. His extensive writing credits include a wide range of contributions to exhibition catalogues as well as numerous contributions to Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, and Parkett.

Anne Ellegood. Photo courtesy the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Anne Ellegood also begins work at the Hammer this May. In her new capacity as senior curator, she will organize large-scale exhibitions as well as oversee Hammer Projects, a series of installations and exhibitions by emerging artists from Los Angeles, the United States and abroad. Previously overseen by curator James Elaine, Hammer Projects will be celebrating its ten-year anniversary in the fall of 2009. Over the course of her curatorial career Ellegood has worked with numerous LA-based artists and many artists who have shown at the Hammer including Andrea Bowers, Mungo Thompson, Evan Holloway, Jeremy Deller, Amy Sillman, Runa Islam, and Mark Handforth.

“I am thrilled to join the Hammer and to be a part of the next phase of the museum’s life,” remarks Anne Ellegood. “I am such a big fan of the Hammer’s program and the sense of responsiveness and dynamism in everything the museum does, that it is an irresistible opportunity to be a part of the team there and of the community of Los Angeles.”

Ellegood has been curator of contemporary art at the Hirshhorn since 2005 and has worked on numerous exhibitions, including the Directions series that, like Hammer Projects, focuses on the work of emerging artists. Exhibitions she organized include Realisms, the second part of The Cinema Effect: Reality, Illusion, and the Moving Image (2008); Refract, Reflect, Project: Light Works from the Collection (2007); and The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas: Recent Sculpture (2006) as well as solo presentations with Terence Gower, Amy Sillman, and Jim Lambie. Prior to the Hirshhorn, Ellegood was the New York-based Curator for Peter Norton’s collection, an ambitious collection of over 2400 works of international contemporary art in all media. From 1998 to 2003, she was Associate Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York where she organized Superficial: The Surfaces of Architecture in a Digital Age (2003); Out of Site: Fictional Architectural Spaces (2002) and solo exhibitions with Candice Breitz and Marco Brambilla. Ellegood has contributed texts to a number of publications and written for periodicals such as Artforum. Her recent writing projects include the introduction for Phaidon’s forthcoming Vitamin 3D, focused on contemporary sculpture and a catalogue essay on Iván Navarro’s work for the Chilean Pavilion in the 2009 Venice Biennale.