Visiting the Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum is a little known gem residing at one end of Westwood Village. It’s managed by the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA. Visitors should not be discouraged by the fact that it’s rather small or “only” a university museum. As they say on their website, “with 20 exhibitions and 300 events a year, there’s always something to see at the Hammer Museum!” This is absolutely true: the director knows that the main attraction at this museum will be the quality of the art shows they put on, rather than the magnitude of their collections. This is the sort of museum one would like to have in town: if you can visit often, wouldn’t you rather have many opportunities to see new things, rather than the same old, same old? The value of this museum can be immediately spotted: although they are are university museum and, as such, they offer prime exhibition space to their students often, they do a lot more than that.

For instance, right now, one can see Marisa Merz’s works in a show entitled “The Sky is a Great Space” (on view until 8/20/2017, so hurry up if you want to see this!) She was part of the Italian Postwar art scene, although her work is less known than the work of her husband, Mario Merz, who was considered one of the main characters of the Arte Povera movement. This is a show that puts together art works that span five decades. There are paintings, sculptures, and installations, which well-deservedly made Merz the recipient of the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

I found some of the installations on display to appeal to me on a personal level. Their minimalism is clever; some of her earlier works, which use only copper wire and nails, engage the viewer in a complicated dance of negative space. 

Untitled, 1993 — Marisa Merz, Fondazione Merz

The delicate copper wire mesh, done by knitting, constitutes a spiral that expands following the progression of the Fibonacci sequence. This can be seen as a commentary on the interplay between natural and man-made: the sequence itself underpins a lot of biological structures; the copper wire is made from naturally occurring materials; and the skilled hands of Merz put this all together into a wonderfully knitted creation. 

Many philosophers (and academics, in general) are knitters: in the US, at least, this is not necessarily a gendered activity, although most of the knitters I know are women. These knitters knit because they are natural-born fidgeters and having their hands occupied at all times gives their minds a way to stay still and reflect on what is being said. This is how several knitters described their activity to me and the reason for doing this at conferences. It would be great, in my opinion, if they would consider using copper wire as yarn for their next project!

A smaller gallery presents, along a circular wall, works by Oliver Payne and Keiichi Tanaami (on view until 08/27/2017), who collaborated on creating a world rife with “Japanese idols, monsters, and ancient deities set amid icons from popular Japanese “bullet hell” academic game” (says organizing curator Aram Moshayedi). These collages have a cute grotesque quality that does not trigger the same stabilizing ironic response as Murakhami’s works. I almost got a physiological reaction akin to the one someone gets when many little bugs are crawling on their skin. I appreciated this, as it’s always interesting to me when one type of art (visual, in this case) triggers an unexpected sensitive response. This is like having temporary, artificially induced, synesthesia.

Untitled 2015 — Oliver Payne and Keiichi Tanaami

For now, Luca didn’t have anything to say about the art on display. We visited the Hammer in the early days of our LA stay: she had just turned 3 months old, at that point. But, as a boon to our visit, we discovered that the Hammer does have changing tables/surfaces in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Kudos for not being sexist and for encouraging parents of children of all ages to come and see the works on view! Even a short review of a museum, like this one, will mention how nice the whole place is: it has an inner courtyard, where the museum cafe is located, which takes full advantage of the outside living that LA affords. The atmosphere is relaxed, babies take very good naps here, and when they’re older they can have all the wonderful books the store sells bought for them!

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