The UCLA Hammer Museum has received a $1 million grant from the James Irvine Foundation's Arts Innovation Fund — one of only four major grants made by the fund statewide — to support the museum's efforts to create a new kind of interactivity in operations and exhibitions. 

 

The grant will aid the museum's creation of an artist-driven visitor engagement and education program that encourages daily contact among visitors, artists, and museum staff and activates the museum's spaces, exhibitions and website in imaginative ways. In addition, the grant, which is payable over four years, will allow for continued support for the Hammer's Artist Residency Program and Artist Council, which were established in 2006 through a $700,000 grant from Irvine's Arts Innovation Fund.

 

"Thanks to the past support from the Irvine Foundation, the Hammer has created an organic way of working with artists, not just in their capacity as object-makers but as problem-solvers. We are engaging them to help us to be a better, more dynamic institution," said Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer. "This new grant of $1 million enables the Hammer to build on the work we started in the last three years and continue to push boundaries and try to stay ahead of the curve."

 

"We are pleased to award an Arts Innovation Fund grant to the Hammer Museum for its innovative approach to engaging visitors and enhancing their experience, both on-site and online," said James E. Canales, the Irvine Foundation's president and CEO. "Through this support, we hope that a new model of arts participation will emerge for the Hammer that can be shared more broadly in the museum field."

 

At the heart of the new grant is the creation of a new model for visitor engagement that departs dramatically from traditional models of art museum visitor services and education programs. Beginning in fall 2009, the Hammer will enlist artists to conceive, develop and implement a new visitor-engagement program with artists as the driving force behind the visitor experience and the museum's education program.

 

Artists will explore and address all aspects of a visit to the Hammer, from basic amenities, way-finding and maps to the creative activation of museum spaces so as to inspire curiosity and collective learning. The Hammer also intends to create more transparency between its staff and audiences by exposing some of the inner workings of the museum. For example, visitors may be presented with spontaneous opportunities to have a brown bag lunch with curators and the director or to visit the Hammer conservation studio.

 

The first sign of this fresh approach will be seen in the Hammer lobby, where a revamped central reception desk with artists, staff and volunteers and digital programming and installations on huge monitors will offer new ways to experience and engage with artworks, exhibitions, collections and spaces. By encouraging visitors to navigate spontaneous encounters through out the museum, this approach will activate every space, from the galleries and bookstore to elevators and stairwells, with artist inventions.

 

Guest artists will be invited for one-year terms to design and implement the visitor services and education program and will report to the curatorial department. Mark Allen, executive director of Machine Project, will be the first guest artist to work with the Hammer during this new initiative. Allen has conducted artist-based and performance experiences with visitors to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

 

In addition to this new initiative, the Hammer will use the grant to continue support of the Artist Residency Program, to expand its engagement with California artists and to connect those artists more firmly to UCLA students and faculty, as well as to the museum's visitors.

 

The award will also enable the Artist Council to take on an even more active role in devising innovative approaches to the challenges of museum operations, including visitor services, academic initiatives and social engagement. The museum will seek to strengthen the ties between the Artist Council and the Artist Residency program and create more connections and interactions between the two programs.

 

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