Ann Philbin to Retire as Director of the Hammer Museum in 2024

Ann Philbin, who has led Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum for 25 years, might be retiring from the museum on Nov. 1, 2024.

Marcy Carsey, chair of the UCLA Hammer Museum’s board of administrators, made the announcement on Wednesday, saying in an announcement, “When the historical past of the Hammer Museum is written, there might be a transparent line drawn— earlier than Annie Philbin, and after Annie Philbin. Because of her imaginative and prescient, the Hammer is understood at the moment as a world-class museum, internationally famend but uniquely and indisputably on the coronary heart of Los Angeles. She has guided a whole transformation of the museum — its services, its assortment and its exhibitions and packages, which she has elevated in each approach — whereas redefining the connection of artwork museums to their communities and their society. We’re profoundly grateful for her management and the values she has imbued into each degree of this establishment.”

Philbin will proceed to steer the museum for the following 12 months, culminating with the autumn 2024 exhibition Breath(e): Towards Local weather and Social Justice. A seek for her successor will start early in 2024.

Philbin grew to become director in January 1999 and has since constructed a global status for the Westwood museum; underneath her management, the Hammer’s annual attendance has greater than quadrupled, its variety of cutting-edge packages doubled, and its wide-ranging collections expanded to greater than 50,000 objects, together with the 4,500 artworks which were acquired since 2005 to type the Hammer Up to date Assortment. Philbin has additionally overseen substantial renovations to the museum’s constructing, including 40,000 sq. toes of recent galleries, administration, and public areas which opened in spring 2023.

“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to steer the Hammer Museum for greater than twenty years, working intently with our supremely devoted boards and good workers to make this establishment all the things that Los Angeles and our wider group deserves,” Philbin mentioned in an announcement. “We now have all the time mentioned that the artists of Los Angeles are our core viewers — and I feel that in the best way we’ve got innovated in our packages and reworked our services, we’ve got created a real ‘artists’ museum’ for them. I provide my profound gratitude to each member of our boards and workers, previous and current, to the a whole bunch of artists we’ve got labored with, to Michael Maltzan Structure, our indispensable collaborators over the previous many years, and the guests we’ve got been honored to serve through the years.”