Home > News > Audrey L. Wilder Donates $5 Million to UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM in Honor of Her Late Husband and Film Legend Billy Wilder

Audrey L. Wilder Donates $5 Million to UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM in Honor of Her Late Husband and Film Legend Billy Wilder

The UCLA Hammer Museum and the UCLA Film and Television Archive are pleased to announce that Audrey L. Wilder has made a generous $5 million gift to name The Billy Wilder Theater in honor of her late husband, the celebrated writer-director. The Billy Wilder Theater is a major element of the Hammer Museum’s renovation plan and will be the new home of the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s public screenings. The theater will be jointly programmed by the Hammer Museum and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale said, “We deeply appreciate the Wilder gift and its significant contribution to the Hammer Museum's building project. The gift will enable two of UCLA's great public-arts venues to present world-class programs in a state-of-the-art facility. This exciting partnership between the Hammer Museum and the UCLA Film and Television Archive will enhance the University's enduring connections with our Westwood neighbors and the broader community.”

“We are so grateful to Audrey Wilder for her generosity, and I cannot imagine a better name than Billy Wilder’s for what will be the centerpiece of our building renovation,” said Ann Philbin, Director of the UCLA Hammer Museum. “His talents as a filmmaker combined with his life-long passion for the visual arts embody the lively creative spirit that the Hammer aims to reflect in all of its activities.”

“This gift to the UCLA Hammer Museum reflects Billy’s passion for film and art, and his dedication to supporting and encouraging artists of all kinds,” noted Audrey L. Wilder. “I think he would be thrilled to have his name on this theater and to see the neighborhood truly come to life.”

Billy Wilder, who died in March 2002 at the age of 95, left an unparalleled cinematic legacy. The Viennese-born émigré fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s only to become one of the quintessential and most highly regarded writer-directors in postwar Hollywood. During a career that spanned over five decades, Wilder won international acclaim, six Academy Awards and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for a body of work that gave the American cinema some of its most memorable, now-iconic images laced with the sharpest of wit. Among the over 20 films he co-wrote and directed are such classics as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, The Lost Weekend, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. A resident of Westwood, Billy Wilder had a passion for paintings and drawings and, over a half century, built a major collection of Impressionist and Modern art including works by Picasso, Klee and Miró.

Tim Kittleson, Director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, said, “We are honored that our new home will carry the name of one of the most gifted filmmakers of the 20th century. We know that this elegant, high-tech theater will match our reputation as one of the country’s preeminent cinematheques. The Billy Wilder Theater will allow us to present the entire span of moving images from silent to digital.”

The Billy Wilder Theater will be as exceptional as its namesake. It will have the versatility to accommodate early film technology such as nitrate film projection, as well as digital video and film presentation and satellite communication. All 288 stadium seats will be digitally wired. Visible from the building’s courtyard through glass walls, the theater’s architecture will be closely integrated into the interior spaces while also anchoring the new Museum entrance at Lindbrook Drive.

The Theater’s unique capabilities make it a fitting setting for the Archive’s critically acclaimed public screenings, an eclectic mix of over 400 films and videos a year, combining the best of American and international cinemas, the classic and the new, the mainstream and the cutting-edge. In addition to the Archive’s programming, the theater will host the broad range of public programs of the Hammer Museum. Currently presented in a temporarily adapted space in the building, these programs include Hammer Reading Series featuring readings by contemporary poets and writers; Hammer Conversations, a series of provocative dialogues on the arts, culture, and sciences; Hammer Forum, timely discussions on current social and political issues; as well as symposia and lecture series organized in collaboration with UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture.

The Hammer Museum’s renovation project is designed by Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan in collaboration with Toronto-based graphic designer Bruce Mau and Amsterdam-based landscape and interior designer Petra Blaisse. The renovation completes Armand Hammer’s vision for the institution with 3,650 square feet of new exhibition space, a 2,660 square foot reception and lecture hall, and a 1,000-square-foot multipurpose classroom in addition to the new theater. A restaurant and an expanded new space for the Museum’s distinguished bookstore will also be integrated into the courtyard. The design re-orients the main entrance to face Westwood Village and UCLA at Lindbrook Drive and visually opens the courtyard and theater lobby to the street through large expanses of glass.

The gift from Audrey L. Wilder significantly advances the Museum’s active capital campaign, leaving less than $10 million to be raised before the entire renovation project can begin. The Billy Wilder Theater, as a stand-alone phase of the project, will proceed independently and is set to begin construction sometime next year.

THE UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM

Founded by Dr. Armand Hammer in 1990, the Museum houses several collections of art: The Armand Hammer Collection of Old Master, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including important examples of work by Rembrandt van Rijn, John Singer Sargent, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Mary Cassatt; The Armand Hammer Daumier and Contemporaries Collection, featuring the painting, sculpture and lithography of 19th-century French satirist Honoré Daumier and his contemporaries; and The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, containing over 40,000 works on paper, including prints, drawings, photographs and artists’ books dating from the Renaissance to the present.

In addition to selections from its permanent collections, Hammer exhibitions present historical and contemporary work in all media of the visual arts, including architecture and design. Hammer Projects, a series of exhibitions focusing on the work of emerging artists, reflect the Museum’s commitment to serving artists by providing a responsive, flexible arena for presenting their work to the Los Angeles community.

The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center is operated by the University of California, Los Angeles. Occidental Petroleum Corporation has partially endowed the Museum and constructed the Occidental Petroleum Cultural Center Building, which houses the Museum.

THE UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE

The UCLA Film and Television Archive—a public unit of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television—is internationally renowned for its pioneering efforts to rescue, preserve and showcase moving image media, and is dedicated to ensuring that the collective visual memory of our time is explored and enjoyed for generations to come.

Located in the film capital of Los Angeles, the Archive excels in showcasing a wide range of American cinema. Contemporary independent films, rare silents and beloved Hollywood classics screen year-round at the Archive. For more than 20 years, the Archive has also been at the forefront of introducing U.S. audiences to important, new filmmakers and movements worldwide. Previously unknown directors whose works were first screened to U.S. audiences by the Archive include some of the most illustrious names in international filmmaking today: Pedro Almodovar, Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Hayao Miyazaki, Nanni Moretti, Walter Salles, Jr., Arturo Ripstein, Aleksandr Sokurov and Wong Kar-Wai.

The Archive holds one of the largest collections of media materials in the United States—second only to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the largest of any university in the world. Its vaults hold more than 220,000 motion picture and television titles and 27 million feet of newsreel footage. The combined collections represent an all-encompassing media documentation of the 20th century.

Contact:
Steffen Böddeker 310-443-7061
boddeker@arts.ucla.edu
Hammer Museum Communications Director

Kelly Graml 310-206-8588
kgraml@ucla.edu
UCLA Film and Television Archive

Domenic Morea 310-479-9929 x118
moread@ruderfinn.com
Ruder Finn Arts and Communication Counselors