Hammer Museum names new leader to succeed longtime director Ann Philbin

The Hammer Museum on the College of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has picked the chief of a significant college artwork museum on the East Coast as its subsequent director. Zoë Ryan, who since 2020 has been the director of the Institute of Modern Artwork (ICA) on the College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, will succeed the Hammer’s longtime director Ann Philbin, who’s retiring subsequent month. Ryan’s first day in her new job will likely be 1 January 2025.

“With its experimental exhibitions and dynamic public programmes, the Hammer has set the tempo for museums to interact with the essential problems with our time, whether or not politics, local weather change or justice and fairness for all,” Ryan mentioned in a press release. “Annie Philbin has had a unprecedented influence in making the Hammer an internationally influential establishment; I’m thrilled and honoured to steer this museum and be part of the colourful artistic communities of Los Angeles.”

Throughout her time on the ICA, Ryan oversaw a significant exhibition dedicated to the pioneering video artist Ulysses Jenkins, which subsequently travelled to the Hammer. Previous to her stint in Philadelphia, Ryan was the Artwork Institute of Chicago’s chair and curator of structure and design from 2006 to 2020. She additionally curated the Istanbul Design Biennial’s second version in 2014.

“Her cross-disciplinary curiosity and mental rigour will undoubtedly enrich the artistic and mental material of our faculty and campus, and we’re assured that her management will take the Hammer Museum to new heights,” Lionel Popkin, the interim dean of UCLA’s college of the humanities and structure, mentioned in a press release.

Ryan arrives on the Hammer after a interval of in depth transformation on the museum. Within the spring of 2023, it accomplished a 24-year enlargement and renovation, in addition to a $180m capital marketing campaign. “There isn’t a single floor within the museum, not one sq. inch, that hasn’t been touched,” Philbin informed The Artwork Newspaper on the time. “The renovation was led by each aesthetic considerations and the objective to create a extra accessible, open and welcoming house.” Shortly thereafter, the museum’s chief curator, Connie Butler, was employed to be the following director of MoMA PS1 in New York. Philbin introduced her retirement in October 2023.