Hammer Blog

Equal parts showcase and showdown, the Hammer’s Open Projector Night is the most raucous independent short film festival around. Films and videos of all genres have garnered praise and wrath alike—filmmakers are encouraged to bring a thick skin! Nationally known and loved comedy team the Sklar Brothers emcee.
Our last Open Projector Night was on March 26, and it was a full house! There were many incredible submissions, but we could only pick 3 winners. In no particular order:
One prize went to Simion Cernica for the film Frame of Mind.
Another prize was awarded to Dan Kapelovitz for Triple Fisher: The Leather Lolitas of Long Island.
The third prize was given to Bobby Howard for The Time Traveler.
Congratulations to all the winners! Stay tuned for the announcement of our next Open Projector Night this summer.

Readymades are mass-produced commercially available objects that the artist Marcel Duchamp designated as art by merely selecting, and sometimes slightly modifying, them. He believed that an artist could elevate a common ordinary object to the status of art by just saying it is so. Nowadays, China is the world's leading manufacturer of the common and everyday readymade. --James Elaine

It's the end of the month, so it's time for Hammergram! We are fascinated by the photos our visitors take of the objects and spaces at the Hammer. That's why we decided to launch Hammergram--a monthly round-up of our favorite visitor photos--in the hopes that they will inspire you to share your own Hammer experience with us!
The Hammer Museum welcomes visitors to take non-flash, personal-use photography (except where noted). Share your images with us by tagging @hammer_museum or #hammermuseum on Instagram or Twitter, and you could be featured in the next Hammergram!
Click to enlarge:

1. @memoryrec goes a little crazy in front of Haim Steinbach's now you can afford to stop driving each other crazy. [part of Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology]
2. @angkoonmd gets up close and personal with Paul Albert Besnard's L'Accouchment in the Tea and Morphine: Women in Paris, 1880 to 1914 galleries.
3. @thisisestherkim watches

Most students have experienced a field trip to a museum at some point during their primary or secondary education. But how many students could call an art museum their home for five consecutive days during the school year? For two sixth grade classes from the UCLA Community School, the normal routine of getting on a bus to go to school in Koreatown was recently disrupted.

The Classroom-in-Residence program at the Hammer Museum, or CIR@H as we fondly call it, took place on March 3-7 for one sixth grade class and on March 10-14 for another. Each class spent five school days receiving arts-integrated instruction from their teachers, sketching and writing in the galleries for extended amounts of time, engaging in movement lessons, and getting VIP treatment from Hammer staff through presentations on museum careers and behind-the-scenes tours. After spending an arts-rich school week at the museum, it was difficult for

Food is at the center of almost every action or conversation in China. In the US when we greet people we comment on the weather, but in China it is always, “have you eaten?” I hear it all day every day; in the subways, on the buses, people on their phones, people on the street chatting, “ni chi le mei you?” “Have you eaten or not?” So, naturally, I spend a lot of time in restaurants with friends and associates. Advance plans to eat together are rare. Usually I will get a call at 5:30PM or 5:45PM to meet on the street downstairs from my building at 6:00PM to go eat together. I rush downstairs, and off I go to some previously unknown restaurant where I undoubtedly will eat something I have never eaten before. Occasionally the menus are translated into English to help the foreign