“Portrait of Patssi” is one of the images that will be on display for the Hammer Museum’s “Together in Time” exhibit. (photo courtesy of Joshua White)

UCLA Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin revealed the roster of spring 2023 exhibitions that will fill the institution’s Lynda and Stewart Resnick Cultural Center beginning March 26, when the Hammer marks the culmination of its two-decades-long project to remake itself inside and out.

Major new street-level exhibition spaces designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture include an expansive lobby that will house rotating installations of site-specific commissions, a new 5,600-square-foot gallery facing Wilshire Boulevard near Glendon Avenue and an outdoor sculpture terrace at the corner of Wilshire and Glendon. When the Hammer celebrates the public opening of these new spaces, all of which are highly transparent from the outside, they will feature a dramatic installation work by Chiharu Shiota, a large-scale installation by Rita McBride and a 25-foot-tall cast bronze sculpture by Sanford Biggers.

Within the museum, nearly all of the Hammer’s galleries will be dedicated to the Hammer Contemporary Collection. Anchored by “Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection,” the suite of exhibitions will fill the majority of the galleries in the museum and will include installations and rotations of artworks emphasizing different strengths of the collection. Complementing “Together in Time” will be “Full Burn: Video from the Hammer Contemporary Collec-tion,” with works presented on a rotating basis every two weeks; “Cruel Youth Diary: Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection,” emphasizing works made in the 1990s and 2000s; as well as a series of solo presentations in the museum’s vault gallery starting with Karon Davis and followed by Kaari Upson and Kara Walker. In June the museum will add “Ecstatic: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection,” which will showcase sculpture and works on paper. Also on view is a retrospective of drawings by Bridget Riley in the recently opened works on paper gallery adjoining the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

“Just as we’ve been transforming the museum over the last two decades, so too have we been building and transforming its collection,” Philbin said. “The Hammer has been actively acquiring contemporary art since 2005 and now has more than 4,000 objects in our collection. On March 26, we’ll welcome the public into a highly anticipated, thoroughly reimagined Hammer that now stretches the length of the entire city block along Wilshire, and we will put the Hammer Contemporary Collection in the spotlight as never before. I’m excited to showcase the Hammer curatorial team’s long-term vision in building an outstanding contemporary art collection that represents the diversity of our audiences and our community.”

“Planning for ‘Together in Time’ has been a collaboration between Ann Philbin and the curatorial staff – including Aram Moshayedi, Erin Christovale, Ali Subotnick and Vanessa Arizmendi – to think about focus areas of the collection and throughlines that have not been explored previously,” Connie Butler, chief curator at the Hammer, said. “We’ve been able to chart the history of contemporary art at the Hammer, with many of the works having been acquired from our biennial exhibition ‘Made in L.A.’ and from our many acclaimed retrospectives and thematic exhibitions; created as part of the artist in residency program; or presented as part of our signature Hammer Projects series of installations by artists working in Los Angeles and internationally.”

The Hammer Museum is located at 10899 Wilshire Blvd. For information, visit hammer.ucla.edu