The Hammer

The Hammer

10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024

The Hammer Museum, known for its “edgy” contemporary art exhibits, made quite the first impression. Being from Los Angeles, I feel I owe it to my city to view as much of it as possible. 

The museum is located on Wilshire Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard. The building itself is two stories high. To arrive, I had to use public transportation so when I was hopping off the metro  bus ( 234), it was confusing for me to figure out where the entrance door was. The door was located on Westwood Blvd. Once inside, almost immediately we got greeted by a hostess, who guided us to the check in desk. Sidenote probably should have mentioned earlier, admission to the Hammer is free. So, when the hostess lead us to the check in I didn’t understand the reason we would have to “check in”. However, I was unaware that for first time visits you have to go through a semi registration process (i.e email,phone number, ect), walking in you can tell how minimalistic the museum theme is. Aside from the gigantic staircase in the middle of the lobby, which led to the service elevator right at the end of the staircase, and the remaining of the exhibitions. This staircase is the first Hammer project to be oriented on the floor rather than the walls. The piece was painted by Yunhe Min who translated  her vibrant imagery onto this staircase. It seemed so perfectly fitted with the white walls. The painting was like blodges of different colored paint splatter all over the staircase. They seemed like random splatters of paint but they had this consistent pattern to them almost as if they were floating with no gravitational pull to them. Very relaxing. 

The inside was not really in doors.There was only walls dividing the lobby and what categorizes the as the inside of the museum. The museum has their own restaurant / bar that I believed was referred to as The Garden. The bar was outside where they also had all type of fucky fun chairs, activites (like ping pong, thank you , I had never played). The second exhibit was interesting. Andrea Fraser’s Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism is an enthralling video. It honestly took me quite some time to understand what Fraser was really doing. Then I realized the artist was switching the way she viewed whatever topic was being discussed at the moment. The artist plays four different men discussing feminism and women’s rights. 

The third exhibit was probably the most popular, without a doubt jaw dropping. Sarah Lucas’s, very exotic, Au naturel subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. The exhibition made a strong statement, the stuffed stocking where the ones that took a bit more observing before I semi understood. An interesting fact I learned after visiting the exhibit was;  Sarah Lucas gathered eighty people in an empty gallery at the Hammer to create One Thousand Eggs: For Women. From my understanding it was intended for just women, but they were not going to act with such brutalism by excluding the men, but if you were a male and wanted to attend the event for humorous effect you were asked to either dress as a woman or phalluses. Which to my understanding after looking it up, means an erected penis. Au Naturel is the first us survey of Lucas’s work and only solo exhibition she had in L.A. 

I would most definitely revisit The Hammer and I will. The museum is a contemporary art museum, and although the museum has other type of art, they are known for hosting contemporary exhibitions. Still recommend