Consider their UCLA Live offerings if you need to match the taste of your New York artsie friends who won’t settle for the latest Stallone flick as a proper town ‘night-outting’.

Day activities needed? Take them to the lunch lectures at the Hammer Museum in Wilshire. With lectures and curated shows to appeal to just about everyone, the Hammer Museum is certainly one option to consider for more casual art offerings. From Comic Masters to up and coming film makers, there’s more than one option for just about every taste and inclination.

Below, you’ll find brief descriptions for upcoming events hosted by Hammer. In case you’re one of those art lovers in a budget, many of the shows listed below are also free to the public.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Thursday, February 23, 7pm
Hammer Lectures: UCLA Department of Art
Martin Kersels
FREE ADMISSION
Martin Kersels applies the principles of performance to his photography, audio works, and sculpture. The Los Angeles-based artist has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Bern, and Paris. Kersels is co-director of the Program in Art at California Institute of the Arts. His work is held in collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Norton Family Foundation.

UCLA Department of Art Lecture Series are organized by artist Catherine Opie, professor in UCLA’s department of art and recipient of the 2004 Larry Aldrich Award.

Wednesday, February 22, 12:30pm
Lunchtime Art Talk
FREE ADMISSION
Hammer curators give a brief 15 minute talk on Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, 1943

Tuesdays at 1pm and Thursdays at 1pm and 6pm
Docent Tours
Hammer docents host free tours of special exhibitions.

EXHIBITIONS

Masters of American Comics
November 20, 2005 –March 12, 2006
Masters of American Comics is the first extensive exhibition of its kind featuring works by 15 influential 20th century American artists who shaped the development of the comic strip and comic book as well as the subsequent generations of comic artists over the last century. Presenting over 900 objects, including original drawings, proofs, printed newspaper pages, comic books, and graphic novels, Masters of American Comics provides understanding and insight into the medium of comics as an art form. 

Co-organized by the Hammer Museum and MOCA, Masters of American Comics is simultaneously on view at both museums. Comics from the first half of the century, which trace the evolution of the American newspaper comic strip, are on view at the Hammer and include works by pioneering artists such as Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Lyonel Feininger (The Kin-der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie’s World), E.C. Segar (Thimble Theatre), Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), and Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts).

Continuing at MOCA, the second part of the exhibition considers comic books from the early Golden Age to the rise of the independent comics movement. The exhibition examines how comics became the dominant medium for narrative illustration by examining the transformation of newspaper strips into comic books and graphic novels. Beginning with Will Eisner (The Spirit) the exhibition continues with Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four and Captain America), Harvey Kurtzman (MAD Magazine), R. Crumb (Zap Comix), Art Spiegelman (Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers), Gary Panter (Jimbo), and Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth).

Masters of American Comics is jointly organized by the Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts. 89.9 KCRW is the official radio sponsor.

  
Hammer Project by Brenna Youngblood
January 14 – April 12, 2006
Brenna Youngblood’s photographic collages are drawn from her everyday life, broken apart and re-assembled. Figures, architecture, and decorative backdrops are fragmented, multiplied, and layered to form dynamic, chaotic rhythms. Youngblood uses her own archive of photographic images and details, from which she pieces together mosaic-like versions of her environment and community. Police cars, storefronts, and people in the artist’s life intertwine, conjuring up personal, social, and cultural situations that are sometimes sinister, sometimes humorous.

Hammer Project by Fikret Atay
January 24 – April 19, 2006
Turkish artist Fikret Atay creates videos that offer short vignettes of life in Batman, a Kurdish city near the Iraqi-Turkish border. Using a hand-held camera and natural lighting, Atay films local residents as they perform traditional dances, beat makeshift drums, and mimic guerrilla maneuvers. His simple style lends a frank authenticity to the images, yet the meanings of the performers' actions remain mysterious to viewers who are unfamiliar with the local culture. Despite the difficulties of filming in the highly charged political atmosphere of Batman, Atay’s insistence on the importance of location gives the work a presence and power unattainable in any other setting.

Hammer Project by Miranda Lichtenstein
January 28 – April 30, 2006
Miranda Lichtenstein’s Polaroid photographs capture moments of transient, dark beauty. Depicting traditional elements of still life imagery—flowers, plants, fruits, and vegetables—she imbues them with a disquieting stillness, which is heightened by the shadowy painted, slightly misaligned, backdrops over which she places her images. Taking cues from early plant photography, the carefully-tended gardens of Giverny, and still life paintings by the 18th century French painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Lichtenstein’s Polaroids suspend and encase the living matter, bathing it in a wash of artificial golden light like so many antique specimens.

The Armand Hammer Daumier and Contemporaries Collection
Daumier’s Drawing Style
December 3, 2005 – February 19, 2006
Presenting a large selection of Daumier’s ink and pencil drawings, watercolors, and lithographs from the Museum’s Daumier and Contemporaries Collection, the exhibition is a rare opportunity to explore Honoré Daumier’s drawing style. As a caricaturist and a confident draftsman, Daumier became adept at working quickly and fluidly, often working out compositions as he drew. His pencil and ink sketches reveal his interest in the human figure, movement, and expression, and his more finished watercolors are some of the most complex works Daumier ever created.

GENERAL INFORMATION
WHERE: Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
MUSEUM HOURS: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.; Thursday  11 a.m. - 9 p.m.; Sunday  11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
ADMISSION: $5 Adults; $3 Seniors (65+) and UCLA Alumni Association members with ID; Free Museum Members, UCLA faculty/staff, Students with ID and visitors 18 and under. Free Thursdays for all visitors.
ADMISSIONS FOR PUBLIC PROGRAMS: Free. Gallery talks free with Museum admissions

INFORMATION: (310) 443-7000;  TTY: (310) 443-7094; 
**Note new email address: info@hammer.ucla.edu
www.hammer.ucla.edu