Hammer Blog

It's the end of the month, so it's time once again for Hammergram! We are fascinated by the photos our visitors take of the objects and spaces at the Hammer. Hammergram is a monthly round-up of our favorite visitor photos in the hopes that it will inspire you to share your own Hammer experience with us.

This September, we will close the third-floor galleries for four months of renovation. Designed by the renowned architect and longtime Hammer partner Michael Maltzan, the modernized and improved galleries will reopen just in time for our winter exhibitions. Over the course of the fall, the museum’s courtyard and lobby galleries, as well as other public spaces, will remain open and active with new programming and exhibitions.

My fellow student educator and I decided to look closely at two photographs found in Still Life with Fish; Jack Pierson’s Self-Portrait #1 and Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait, 1970. When looking at these two photographs in Still Life with Fish, I was compelled to open up a conversation with visitors about why the exhibition’s curators might have chosen to place these works on the same wall.

A group of viewers on an Art in Conversation tour are looking closely at Emile Bernard’s Wheat Harvest. During the half hour duration of the tour, visitors ponder the connections between two works of art.

This post is from the first trip I made to Hunan with Xie Hong Dong last summer, to visit artist Wu Xiaowu, his wife Jia Jia, and Yuan Yuan, their 1 year-old baby girl. Xiaowu (shao-woo) had his first show at Telescope, my non-profit space in Beijing, in 2014.