The Hammer Museum

Western Exterior Wall at the Hammer Museum, Westwood

On Sunday afternoon we met our friends, Anne and Jeff at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. We met Anne and Jeff last year on our Louisiana vacation. We became Facebook friends and found that we had many mutual friends and experiences....Los Angeles natives, you know. It's been a year since our visit to Louisiana and a year since we've seen Anne and Jeff, even though we live about 10 miles apart! We must get together more often!

The Hammer has some interesting exhibits right now. The first gallery we visited showed The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio. This exhibit was mind-boggling, encompassing designs for small holiday cards to entire buildings and bridges! I was most impressed by the extruded aluminum benches.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Next gallery, Charles Gaines: Gridwork.  I'm all about the grid. There were a series of drawings, paintings and photographs organized by tiny numerical grid/boxes. The numbers were painstakingly tiny within the grids, all hand-written!  #ocd. The work was very colorful and fascinating.

Charles Gaines Artwork

Check out those teensy numbers!

"Apparitions: Frottages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now" was intriguing too. I particularly liked the image below.

There were many more exhibitions and galleries, including the Hammer's permanent collection that we breezed through. One thing I do like about the Hammer, it's manageable for a short visit.

Lily van der Stokker's wall installations

In the courtyard there were these circular "chairs" designed by the Heatherwick Studio that people could sit in and roll around the courtyard. They reminded me of the teacups at Disneyland.

We sat in the sunshine and reminisced about our trip to Louisiana. Anne and Jeff told us about their upcoming travels. By 2:30 pm, The Hammer was starting to get really crowded, so we parted ways. We look forward to our next meet-up with our friends.

Jeff, Anne and Larry