‘What?’ indeed! Lari Pittman’s brain-tingling artworks at the Hammer
Nov
19
2019
“Birthplace, 1984” installation photo by Susie Goodman artsmeme is delighted to celebrate the dazzling retrospective of astonishing works by Los Angeles artist Lari Pittman now at the Hammer Museum by reprinting, with the author’s kind permission, two separate interviews, one with Pittman and a second with the exhibition’s curator Connie Butler. The author/interviewer is KUSC’s ...
Charles White, at our city’s artistic center LACMA
Charles White in his Los Angeles studio, 1970 photo: Robert A. Nakamura The Pacific Standard Time art extravaganza that blanketed Southern California in 2011 brought much-needed, new focus to the art currents that circulated in post-World War II Los Angeles. Those surveys, as fine as they were (there were some glorious shows), implored further explorations. ...
Michael Vlatkovich’s unpredictable musical universe @ the Hammer
Michael Vlatkovich’s idiosyncratic music balances the meticulous writer with the laissez faire bandleader. The trombonist/composer has the uncommon luxury of convening seven pieces at the Hammer Museum’s free JazzPOP series this coming Thursday night. Drummer Chris Garcia, who has played with Vlatkovich since 1991, recalls a tour. “We had a new bass player,” Garcia says. ...
Armand & Henry & Vincent & friends have a play date
Jul
15
2016
Industrial tycoons Henry Huntington and Armand Hammer, two of Los Angeles’s most significant arts barons, ruled over great collections that form the core of major museums in Los Angeles. (Collectors respectively of the early and mid 20th century, Huntington and Hammer still pale by comparison, in their acquisitive nature, to L.A.’s tycoon-collector of the day, Eli ...
Robert Rauschenberg, dancer
Hazel Larsen Archer Elizabeth Schmitt Jennerjahn and Robert Rauschenberg C. 1952. Gelatin silver print, 6 1/4 x 9 ¼ inches. Estate of Hazel Larsen Archer and Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center. Not just company ‘stage manager,’ longtime friend, and resident designer to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, but Robert Rauschenberg, the great abstract artist, ...
Merce at Black Mountain, revisited by L.A. Dance Project @ the Hammer
The Hammer Museum took on a Merce-ish mood, February 20, when L..A. Dance Project revitalized a classic Cunningham event to mark the opening of a new exhibition, Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933 – 1957. [In the photos, “Project” dancers Anthony Bryant and Lilja Rúriksdóttir.] Cunningham, along with artistic collaborator and life partner ...
Dancers, meet the museum world. Museums: consider dance.
This weekend, the Hammer Museum presents Dancing with the Art World, a two-day symposium that convenes artists, choreographers, curators, and historians to reflect on the interface between dance and art, consider its historical precedents, and debate its effects on artistic and institutional practice. Dance has long intersected meaningfully with the visual arts. But in recent ...
I *do* care that you get tickets for “The I Don’t Care Girl” screening August 4
The Billy Wilder Theater, where UCLA Film & Television Archive will screen “The I Don’t Care Girl” on Saturday night, August 4, with Mitzi Gaynor attending, is located on the ground floor of the Hammer Museum. The Hammer Museum is the old Occidental Petroleum Building at the corner of Wilshire & Westwood Boulevard. It’s right ...
Amiri Baraka visits Los Angeles, raps about art
Jan
17
2012
It was inspiring to eavesdrop on Amiri Baraka, the poet, playwright, essayist, intellectual, and political activist, as he swapped kitchen table banter about life and art with his daughter, the academic and curator, Dr. Kellie Jones. The tête-à-tête took place before an SRO audience at the Hammer’s Billy Wilder Theater. It was the closing day ...
Gene Kelly’s television broadcasts @ Hammer Museum 1
I’m looking forward to attending UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Gene Kelly event which comprises part of their film preservation festival . Event is called,“Gene Kelly On Television.” OMNIBUS: ‘Dancing: A Man’s Game NBC, 12/21/1958 (1958) Directed by Gene Kelly and William A. Graham In writing, choreographing and directing this program for the prestigious Omnibus ...