Hammer Museum

The named Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Hammer Museum or short UCLA Hammer Museum, is an art museum in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California. It is operated by the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California.

History

The museum was designed by Armand Hammer, the former head of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, founded in November 1990 to showcase his extensive art collection. 15 days after opening the museum to the public its founder died. Hammer was previously almost 20 years a board member of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ( LACMA ) and had his private art collection actually promised this museum. The more surprised was the LACMA, as Hammer had built a museum by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes next to the headquarters.

The construction of the 7200 square meter three-story building cost $ 60 million, the endowment was initially 38 million. Since the money came from the company's capital, accused the shareholders and thus achieved a limitation of the equipment costs.

Collections

The Hammer Museum contains a small collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist. It has 7500 works on the largest Daumier collection outside of Paris. It also contains valuable paintings by Rembrandt, Titian and Chardin. In 1956, the collector from Los Angeles, Fred Grunwald gave ( 1898-1968 ), more than 5,000 works on paper, graphics and prints, among other things, by Hieronymus Wierix, Albrecht Dürer and many Japanese prints. This collection forms the basis for today's more than 45,000 objects comprehensive Grunwald Center Collection.

Controversy

The museum came in 1994 in the headlines through the sale of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for $ 30.8 million. This codex was one of the most famous collectors' items, the hammer had acquired in 1980 for $ 5,120,000. In contradiction to the guidelines of other museums that use the profits from their sales to acquire new collection pieces, the Hammer Museum sold the 72-page scientific Codex to finance its exhibitions and events.