Building a Contemporary Collection

Since their inauguration in 1952, the UCLA Art Galleries (today the New Wight Gallery) have exhibited the work of contemporary artists, as did the Hammer Museum once UCLA took it over in 1994. The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts has collected contemporary prints since its inception, and starting in 2005 the Hammer Museum formally began collecting the work of contemporary artists.

The focus of the Hammer Contemporary Collection is the art of the past decade, although earlier works that speak to themes in contemporary art and the rest of the Hammer’s collections are also acquired. Particular attention is paid to works by artists from Southern California, with additional acquisitions from artists working elsewhere in the United States and internationally. Works also find their way into the collection through exhibitions at the Hammer, including from the Hammer Projects series. The collection grows in an organic way, and as new gifts are received and purchases are made, its priorities and direction are constantly reassessed.

Acquisitions to the Hammer Contemporary Collection have been so robust and of such high quality thanks in great part to the strength of UCLA’s Department of Art faculty and alumni, including such internationally renowned artist-professors as John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Catherine Opie, Charles Ray, and James Welling. The range of media in the Hammer Contemporary Collection parallels the diverse approaches practiced within UCLA’s Department of Art, such as its groundbreaking addition of New Genres (spearheaded by Burden and McCarthy in the mid-1980s) and Interdisciplinary Studio (initiated by Kelly in 1997). Though these additions came at the cost of a dedicated graphic arts program—the university’s printing presses were literally deaccessioned to make space for New Genres—they inaugurated a new impulse to think beyond the boundaries of specific mediums toward a conceptual, performative, and multidisciplinary approach to art making.