Hammer Museum

"Zarina: Paper Like Skin" is the first retrospective of the Indian-born American artist Zarina, featuring approximately 60 works dating from 1961 to the present. Paper is central to Zarina's practice, both as a surface to print on and as a material with its own properties and history. Works in the exhibition include woodcuts as well as three-dimensional casts in paper pulp. Zarina's vocabulary is minimal yet rich in associations with her life and the themes of displacement and exile. The concept of home-whether personal, geographic, national, spiritual, or familial-resonates throughout her oeuvre. Join Zarina and curator of the exhibition, Allegra Pesenti as they speak about Zarina's life, work, and history. (Run time 12 min.)

10/9/12--- A. M. Homes is the author of the memoir "The Mistress's Daughter" and the novels "This Book Will Change Your Life," "Music for Torching," and "The Safety of Objects." Her new novel, "May We Be Forgiven," takes a darkly comic look at 21st-century domestic life. Homes lives in New York City. (Run Time 58 min.)

10/11/12---With David Rodes, Director Emeritus, The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The Irish writer and wit Oscar Wilde and his friend the French actress Sarah Bernhardt were two of the most famous celebrities of late 19th-century Europe. Their collaboration in the 1890s on the theatrical tragedy Salome was inspired by the shimmering painting by Gustave Moreau, but by the time the play had its premiere in Paris in 1896, Bernhardt cast as the young princess, was over 50 and Wilde was serving a two-year sentence for sodomy in an English prison. Nevertheless, as Wilde would assert, "Legend remains victorious in spite of history," and this program hopes to recapture the scandalous excitement of the play and its starring actress and imprisoned author. (Run Time 49 min.)

9/30/12---Join the artist Zarina and curator Allegra Pesenti for a conversation in the galleries of the exhibition Zarina: Paper Like Skin. (1 hour, 12min.)

9/11/12---In a political climate charged with fierce partisanship and negative rhetoric, Democratic strategist and former Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele discuss strategies for bridging the red-blue divide. Motivated by a desire for bipartisanship and civility, Davis and Steele founded Purple Nation Solutions, a D.C.-based government affairs, legal crisis management, and strategic communications firm. (Run Time 1 hour, 27min.)

wild Up, the Hammer's first orchestra-in-residence, is an L.A.-based 24-member experimental ensemble that mixes classical works, new compositions, and indie music, seeking to reconceptualize the role of an orchestra in its community. Wild Up's eclectic and insightful programming changes the experience of the classical concert, with their philosophy of "radical-inclusionism" interacting with the audience through storytelling and theatricality while experimenting in various musical genres. With the museum as home base until December, wild Up explores performance and context by revealing its creative process. The group will engage an audience outside of the traditional concert setting by presenting open rehearsals and delving into the diverse interests of orchestra members by featuring them as soloists. The residency will include concerts, open rehearsals, and chamber music. Check the website for full performance schedule.

8/16/12--- As the growing financial sector approaches 50% of our economy, many business leaders and economists worry that instead of creating wealth through products and jobs, we are extracting wealth and concentrating it at the top. William Lazonick, the director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network joins us along with the Silicon Valley philanthropist and venture capitalist Andy Rappaport to discuss ways to revitalize our economy and create jobs that sustain and broaden our prosperity. (Run Time 1 hour, 27 min.)

9/13/12---Michael Chabon is the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Summerland, The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen?s Union, and Gentlemen of the Road, as well as the short-story collections A Model World and Werewolves in Their Youth and the essay collections Maps and Legends and Manhood for Amateurs. His new novel is Telegraph Avenue. Michael is joined on stage by his wife, writer Ayelet Waldman. (Run Time 1 hour, 30 min.)

7/24/12---The Pentagon recently announced plans to reduce U.S. troop levels while expanding its global fleet of drones. Joining us to discuss the civilian use of drones and the technological, policy and ethical issues of robotic warfare are Eric Johnson, one of the country's leading experts in the development and operation of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles); Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University and a former ethics fellow at the US Naval Academy; and UCLA's John Villasenor, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. (Run Time 1 hour, 18 min.)

wild Up, the Hammer's first orchestra-in-residence, is an L.A.-based 24-member experimental ensemble that mixes classical works, new compositions, and indie music, seeking to reconceptualize the role of an orchestra in its community. Wild Up's eclectic and insightful programming changes the experience of the classical concert, with their philosophy of "radical-inclusionism" interacting with the audience through storytelling and theatricality while experimenting in various musical genres. With the museum as home base until December, wild Up explores performance and context by revealing its creative process. The group will engage an audience outside of the traditional concert setting by presenting open rehearsals and delving into the diverse interests of orchestra members by featuring them as soloists. The residency will include concerts, open rehearsals, and chamber music as well as public programs. Check the website for full performance schedule.

5/17/12---Adrian Saxe is one of the most important artists working in ceramics today. He has participated in numerous exhibitions including those at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Taiwan Museum of Art; and Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, Japan. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres, France. He is a professor in the UCLA Department of Art. (Run Time 1 hour, 9 min.)

6/21/12---In anticipation of a ruling in June by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, public policy expert and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University Paul Starr joins us to offer his analysis. Starr received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for his book The Social Transformation of American Medicine. He was a senior adviser on the Clinton health plan, and his most recent book is Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform. (Run Time 1 hour, 17 min.)

4/26/12 --- Allen Ruppersberg is a conceptual artist whose work includes paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures,installations, and books. He is recognized as a seminal practitioner of installation art, having produced such influential works as Al's Cafe (1969), Al's Grand Hotel (1971), and The Novel That Writes Itself (1978). Since the late 1960s, his work has been the subject of more than 80 solo exhibitions and nearly 200 group exhibitions. He lives in L.A. and New York. (Run time: 1 hour, 32 min.)

5/24/12---Materializing the Immaterial. A discussion between T. Kelly Mason, Tyler Cassity, and George Baker on funerary objects and practices in early 21st-century Los Angeles and the relationship of these to private and collective ideas of memory, space, and the expression of desire. L.A.-based artist Mason?s current project, inspired by the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, was commissioned by the Hammer as a special project for the museum's courtyard. Cassity is a renowned cemetarian, redefining how Americans handle death at his Hollywood Forever cemetery as well other final resting places throughout California. Baker is an associate professor of art history at UCLA, and his newest book, Lateness and Longing: On the Afterlife of Photography, will be published in 2012. In conjunction with T. Kelly Mason's light box installation project. (Run Time 1 hour, 23 min.)

5/15/12 --- Joining us is the environmentalist Bill McKibben, who recently led demonstrations at the White House that delayed the approval of a pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to Texas. The contentious Keystone XL pipeline has become a hot election year issue. He is the author of several books, including The End of Nature, and his latest, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Also joining us is Josh Fox, writer and director of the acclaimed documentary Gasland, which firstrevealed the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or ?fracking.? In the name of energy independence, natural gas companies are using fracking with the promise to turn the U.S. into the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Fox is the founder of International WOW Company, a film and theater company committed to socially conscious themes and subjects. (1 hour, 39 min.)