UCLA Artists in the Hammer Museum Collections
The Hammer Museum Launches an Expanded Digital Archive
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to launch 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
This month's contribution is by Cynthia Burlingham, director, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts
UCLA Artists in the Hammer Museum Collections, 1919–Today
Today, the UCLA Department of Art is one of the most respected in the field, with a stellar faculty roster and a distinguished track record among its many graduates. Its pre-eminence is, at least in part, the product of over 100 years of history. Since its beginnings in 1919, the Department of Art has remained as a model of pedagogy and practice for art departments and schools around the country.
The collections of the Hammer Museum bear witness to this remarkable history. Thanks to numerous acquisitions and bequests, including several major gifts by former faculty including Dorothy Brown, Robert Heinecken, and Jim Welling, the museum’s collections evolved in parallel with the Department of Art. The works in the Hammer Contemporary Collection and the UCLA Grunwald Center Collection now offer a privileged glimpse into the Department of Art’s most influential legacies.
This digital archive presents over 2300 works by more than 100 artists who taught or studied at UCLA, as well as supplemental resources including a chronology and an oral history compiled from dozens of individual accounts. It charts the department’s general progression while also showcasing significant strengths in particular media such as photography and printmaking. Thanks to this expansive outlook, the digital archive offers viewers the chance to understand the history of the UCLA Department of Art while better appreciating the significant place it occupies in the discourses surrounding contemporary art.
This archive is not meant to provide an exhaustive history of the UCLA Department of Art. Nevertheless, the exhaustive lists of students and faculty represented in the collection, available for download as pdfs, and the galleries of images will convey the department’s incredible reach while teasing out some of the primary narratives and significant formal developments shaping the history of art over the past century.
Below are selected images from the digital archive:
Professor Emeritus Robert Heinecken
Surrealism on TV
Analia Saban '05
Draped Concrete
Professor Catherine Opie
Kate & Laura
Professor Emeritus James Welling
0469
Distinguished Professor Lari Pittman
Set Arrangements
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