Hammer Museum

12/11/11---Hilton Als is a theater critic for the New Yorker and the author of Women and Justin Bond/Jackie Curtis. He received a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing in 2000 and has taught at Smith College, Wesleyan, and Yale University. In 2010 he co-curated Self-Consciousness at the Veneklasen Werner Gallery in Berlin. Artist Kara Walker is known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide. In 2007 the major survey exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love premiered at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, before traveling to several venues, including the Hammer. Walker was also the first artist to be featured in the museum's Hammer Projects series in 1999. (Run time: 1 hour, 12 min.)

1/8/12---Now Dig This! curator Kellie Jones and her father---renowned poet, playwright, and activist Amiri Baraka---discuss their collaboration on Jones's book EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art, which investigates various perspectives on art making throughout different generations. Jones is associate professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Her writings have appeared in NKA, Artforum, Flash Art, Atlantica, Third Text, and numerous catalogues. Baraka is the author of more than 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism. The former Poet Laureate of New Jersey, he has received numerous honors including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and an Obie Award for his play Dutchman (1963). (Run time: 1 hour, 13 min.)

In early 2011, we visited Now Dig This! artist Maren Hassinger in her New York studio. Watch as she discusses her process, the importance of friendships, and what it was like to live and make art in Los Angeles in the 1970s. (Run Time 6 min.)

12/4/11---Pioneering artists Barbara McCullough and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, curator Josine Ianco-Starrels, and gallerist Suzanne Jackson gather to reflect on gender politics in art, then and now. Moderated by art historian Bridget Cooks. In conjunction with the exhibition Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980. (Run time: 1 hour, 40 min.)

12/8/11---Scholars Robin D. G. Kelley (USC/UCLA), Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern University), and Daniel Widener (UCSD) discuss black artists in Southern California through history, and the role of geography, migration, and economics in creating the potent mix that produced the black arts movement. Moderated by Now Dig This! curator Kellie Jones. (Run Time 1 hour, 34 min.)

11/9/11---Sue Williams is a New York-based painter who has had solo exhibitions at the Carpenter Center, Harvard University, Cambridge; IVAM, Valencia, Spain; Secession, Vienna, Austria; and Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva. (Run time: 51 min.)

In October 2011 we sat down with Ulysses Jenkins to discuss his diverse body of video and performance work. From his early documentation of the Watts Festival in the 1970s to his current investigation of the media's portrayal of African American men, Jenkins examines questions of race, history, and the power of the state. (Run time 9 min.)

11/8/11---Lawrence Weschler, the award-winning biographer of Robert Irwin and David Hockney and former staff writer for the New Yorker, will discuss Uncanny Valley, his latest collection of political tragedies and cultural comedies. Weschler is currently the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. (Run Time: 1 hour, 21 min.)

11/17/11---Marking one year until the 2012 elections, we explore the multi-billiondollar election machinery. Two veteran campaign strategists join us for a discussion about the psychology and technology behind political persuasion. Dan Schnur is the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California and worked on four presidential campaigns. Bill Zimmerman is a political consultant who has worked on numerous election campaigns and ballot initiatives. Moderated by Ian Masters. (Run time: 1 hour, 51 min.)

12/1/2011---For more than four decades Angela Davis has been one of the most influential activists and scholars involved in the social justice movement. Her recent work has focused on incarceration and the criminalization of communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. Her recent books are Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire and Are Prisons Obsolete? Robin Levi is the human rights director at Justice Now. While a staff attorney at the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, she documented sexual abuse of women in U.S. state prisons. She has recently co-edited a book of essays by prisoners called Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women's Prisons. (Run time: 1 hour, 22 min.)

11/1/11 --- Renowned poets Jayne Cortez and Kamau Daaood are joined by emerging L.A. poets Thea Monyee and Javon Johnson for an evening celebrating the art of the spoken word. Hosted by Shihan Van Clief. (Run Time: 1 hour, 48 min.)

11/15/11 --- Gallerist Alonzo Davis, and collectors Vaughn Payne and Joy Simmons join curator Franklin Sirmans and art historian Karin Higa to talk about the importance of galleries and collectors in creating an African American art community in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. In conjunction with the exhibition "Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980". (This program is titled after a work by artist Sheila Levrant de Bretteville featured in the exhibition.) (Run time: 1 hour, 26 min.)

Invited by the Hammer to participate in our Artist Residency Program, VanDerBeek spent several weeks in Los Angeles over the past year. The works included in her Hammer Project have grown out of this residency and offer a particular view into our city. After she finished her installation in the vault gallery at the museum, we spoke with her about this project. (Run time: 6 min., 37 sec.)

Invited by the Hammer to participate in our Artist Residency Program, Sara VanDerBeek spent several weeks in Los Angeles over the past year. The works included in her Hammer Project have grown out of this residency and offer a particular view into our city. Before she created her installation, she invited a Native American dancer named Sonya Flores to activate the gallery. This video provides two views of that performance. (Run time: 2 min., 23 sec.)

10/20/11 --- Co-presented by The Center for Food Law and Policy. The U.S. suffers from an obesity epidemic that produces massive health-care costs, often at taxpayers' expense. Why are government food policies so slow to change in the face of this crisis? Dr. David Heber, professor of medicine and public health and director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, and Michael Roberts, director of The Center for Food Law and Policy and adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Law, provide insights from a public health, legal, and policy perspective. (Run time: 1 hour, 30 min.)