The Hammer Museum recently announced the appointment of Allegra Pesenti as associate director and senior curator of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

Allegra Pesenti

Pesenti returns to the Hammer Museum, where she was the Grunwald Center Curator from 2007 to 2013.

Most recently, she served as chief curator for the Menil Drawing Institute then as curator-at-large for the Menil Collection. During her time there, she worked closely with Los Angeles-based architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee on the conception and design of the Menil Drawing Institute, the first freestanding center in America devoted solely to the collecting, research, conservation, and exhibition of works on paper.

Allegra Pesenti is presently co-curating the 2018 exhibition “Stones to Stains: Drawings by Victor Hugo” for the Hammer with Cynthia Burlingham, director of the Grunwald Center and deputy director of curatorial affairs at the Hammer Museum.

“We are delighted that Allegra has returned full time to the Hammer,” Hammer Director Ann Philbin said. “Her expertise in works on paper is a tremendous asset to the Grunwald Center, one of the country’s finest collections of prints, photographs, and artists’ books. We are particularly looking forward to the exhibition of Victor Hugo’s drawings that she is organizing with Cynthia Burlingham.”