Hammer Blog

As Fred Grunwald’s son Ernest tells the story, his father was fortunate to have Hermann Wistinetzki as a brother-in-law. Hermann, who was many years older than Fred, had married Fred’s sister Irma before the First World War.

When our research team first met in the summer of 2015, it became apparent that, while we knew many details about Fred Grunwald’s life in Los Angeles, our understanding of his first forty years in Germany was quite sketchy.

In July 2017, the Hammer will launch its digital archive Loss and Restitution: The Story of the Grunwald Family Collection. In this series, project researchers Kirk Nickel and Maia Woolner will share how they recreated Grunwald's story through archival research, from his early collecting days in Germany to the seizure of his collection by the Gestapo to his emigration to the United States and rebuilding his collection.

The four drawings in the Hammer’s permanent collection were lent to the Pettibon retrospective, A Pen of All Work, which traveled from the New Museum to the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht where it will be on view until October 29, 2017.

We continue in our series of VER staff highlights with Ramon Espinosa, Visitor Experience Lead and (spoiler alert) former pastry cook.