10 of the best Hammer Museum exhibitions during Ann Philbin’s directorship

The UCLA Hammer Museum has compiled an impressive exhibition record over the past two decades under Ann Philbin’s directorship. After a quarter-century at the helm of the institution, Philbin will retire in fall 2024, leaving behind a drastically transformed museum. During her tenure, the Hammer grew into an international player and its contemporary program became unrivaled among American university museums.

In addition to “Made in L.A.,” the ongoing biennial survey of area art, here are just 10 of the finest exhibitions presented during Philbin’s time at the institution.

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In blow to L.A. art scene, Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin to retire in 2024

Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin will step down from the post in fall 2024, wrapping up a quarter-century at the helm of an institution that she drastically transformed.

Oct. 18, 2023

Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective* (2003)
Bontecou was an extraordinarily gifted sculptor who, in the early 1970s, walked away from a flourishing career — one that is difficult enough for any artist to achieve but that was even harder for a woman in her day.

Masters of American Comics* (2005, with MOCA)
Comics, born a century ago and lingua franca in the work of contemporary artists, are among the most established forms of mass art. This was the first major art museum show to examine the 20th century development.

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980* (2011)
The show told an important story within L.A.’s art history that was not so much unknown as under-known.

UH-OH: Frances Stark, 1991–2015* (2015)
In her enthralling midcareer survey, Stark emerged as the visual poet laureate of the internet age.

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933–1957 (2016)
The exhibition demonstrated why “legendary” is a word often used to describe a school in the middle of nowhere, 200 miles west of the North Carolina state capital, with a per-semester enrollment that barely reached 100 during its 24-year existence.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985* (2017)
This great big avalanche of an exhibition was an exciting rush of work by scores of artists almost entirely unknown outside their 14 home countries, plus the U.S.

Stones to Stains: The Drawings of Victor Hugo* (2018)
Best known as the author of “Les Misérables,” Hugo created a contemplative poetics of abstraction startling in its originality — and half a century before other European and American artists even dared.

Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property (2019)
A blissful retrospective — art revealed as delighted exploration of sober matters — traced Ruppersberg’s Conceptual art chops.

Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence* (2019)
Pittman makes the queerest paintings around. He’s been doing it nonstop since 1985.

Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine (2022)
Western art history is overrun with themes like bodily violence and spiritual transcendence, and they find resonance in African American life. Thompson’s paintings look them in the eye.

Exhibits organized by the Hammer are identified with an asterisk.