The influential museum in Westwood will greet visitors March 26 with a new street-facing entryway and a major outdoor sculpture by Sanford Biggers: “For so long we’ve been kind of a hidden gem.”
Sanford Biggers’ Oracle was commissioned for and installed at Rockefeller Center in New York in 2021. On March 26, it will be presented as an ongoing exhibit at the Hammer by the Art Production Fund with Marianne Boesky Gallery.Inside, the museum will gain 40,000 square feet of exhibition space by expanding into the area next door once occupied by City National Bank.
Adds Butler: “The idea of bringing it to Los Angeles where the artist is originally from as a way to mark our reopening and the reopening of the ground floor and the entrance of our building was a no-brainer, really,” Butler says. “It’s such an iconic, monumental piece.”that she’s proud that the arts institution, overseen by director Ann Philbin, has remained open as it has expanded.
The museum’s two-decade transformation does not represent any notable departure from the vision that first birthed it, but instead signals an investment in a space that already exists as a thriving destination in the city’s art scene and the belief that it will continue to be a valuable institution in the future.
Butler says she sees the museum’s growth as rising in tandem with that of the city it calls home. “We’ve seen L.A. go from being viewed kind of as an outpost,” she says, “to now being viewed as one very important center in the international contemporary art world.”
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