Hammer Blog

The Hammer is excited to be among 350+ museums from 34 countries participating in Ask a Curator Day on Wednesday, September 18 via the microblogging site Twitter.
Hammer curatorial staff will be live tweeting from 11AM to 3PM PDT.  Tweet your questions to @hammer_museum and make sure to use the #AskaCurator hashtag.  We can't wait to hear from you!

11AM-12PM

Aram Moshayedi | Curator
Aram recently came to the Hammer from the gallery at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater). His first exhibition for the Hammer is Pentti Monkkonen: Selected Works from the Baldwin Hills Space Association and he is currently organizing a selection of works from the Hammer Contemporary Collection. His area of expertise is projects and exhibitions.

12-1PM
Emily Gonzalez | Curatorial Assistant

Emily has worked on many Hammer exhibitions including Mark Leckey: On Pleasure Bent, LLYN FOULKES, Made in L.A. 2012, and All of this and nothing

An excerpt from Time Out Bejing:

ALTERNATIVE ART: TELESCOPE

As a non-profit gallery, Telescope offers an alternative to commercial ones

‘As an artist, Telescope is my project, an art work in itself,’ says James Elaine, the founder and curator of the Caochangdi-based space. Elaine worked as a curator in the United States for more than 25 years, at institutional behemoths The Drawing Center in New York and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In 2012, he migrated to the more modest confines of Telescope, converted from an old massage parlour in the dusty labyrinths of Caochangdi.

‘My mother was born in Shandong province,’ explains Elaine. ‘Her parents, my grandparents, were doctors who founded a hospital and worked there many years. I grew up with a knowledge and love of China and the people.’ Drawing upon his experiences from across the Pacific ocean, Elaine hopes that Telescope can

In honor of the current LA heat wave, lets think chilly thoughts!


I don’t know why I was a little surprised to see snowmen in Beijing when I first arrived in 2008. The snowman tradition is older than the USA’s snow, possibly dating back to cave dwellers in Mongolia and northeast China, and that tradition continues in the art districts of Beijing and surrounding areas to this day. I ride my bicycle through the snow and ice to find the contemporary renditions of an ancient art form: Snowmen. -James Elaine

My friend and assistant Xie Hong Dong accompanied me on an overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai to see some galleries and the 9th Shanghai Biennale. This train leaves late at night, and arrives early the next morning. It’s always potluck who you will meet or share a compartment with, if you are fortunate enough to have a sleeping compartment. Most people just have seats or even stand on the trains. We ate, visited with our curious neighbors, then tried to read but, sleepy or not, at 9:00pm all the lights went out abruptly and a cacophony of snoring began shortly thereafter…mercifully the next thing I knew Shanghai was in view.





Reactivation
9th Shanghai Biennale
2012-10-2 – 2013-3-31
Chief Curator: Qiu Zhijie
Co-Curators: Boris Groys, Jens Hoffman, Johnson Chang Tsang-zung



The 9th Shanghai Biennale was located, for the first time, at the 2010 World Expo site, the Pavilion of

Moving into a rental after being a home owner.

It has been 5 months now since I moved out of the house I co-owned and joined the land of tenancy. I was an owner for almost 5 years. Was there a difference? Hell yeah.
But not in the ways I expected. I NEVER got the feeling of total security when I lived in the house I own. I purchased it in 2008. The height of market precocity. Times have changed. The idea of real estate being the most stable and security producing investment has changed. Changed for the middle and moderate income folks that is.
For me owning that home produced a deep level of panic. Getting behind on the mortgage felt irrevocably vulnerable. Are there rights or procedures that are codified and firmly established? Every situation seems arbitrary. The stories of bank evictions, refusals to refinance, and financiers taking