My visit to the Hammer Museum

My awesome tour guide and I

Driving to different places around LA I usually always take Wilshire every time I take it a certain building always catches my eye. It has the word Hammer written across it with big silver letters. In my time here at UCLA I have constantly heard of the Hammer Museum but nothing more then that. I knew it was associated with UCLA but it was a bit of a unicorn in the sense that I had no idea where it was but I knew it was close and some people had been to it. It wasn't until this class that I put two and two together and figured out that the building on Wilshire that had grabbed my attention so many times was actually the Hammer Museum!

Having some fun with the art

Upon entering the museum something caught my eye, it was a series of chairs in the courtyard. These chairs were unlike any other that I have seen before, you could sit in them and spin around at crazy angles. I probably spent 10 mins there having more fun then I thought I would have at a museum. While I'm on the subject of having fun at the museum it was to my amazement that on the third floor they had two ping pong tables. I played a couple games while on my way from one of the the displays to the other.

My favorite display at the Hammer has to with something we learned about it our class, Math and its relation to Art. The exhibit was a series of different renditions of what buildings around the world would and do look like. These were no ordinary buildings but rather some of the most modern, beautiful and artistic buildings I have ever seen. The way that this ties in with our class is that if you had told me that scale models of buildings could have ben considered art I would have laughed and said no way. Boy was I wrong. They were beautiful and I considered them art right from the get go. It was definitely cool to see how the artist took math to help design the building and thus it becoming art.

Tree art 

All of the other displays were really cool too. One of the highlights can be seen in the picture to the left. They are trees that are made up of tiny squares with numbers inside of them. When you looked at them from far away they looked like colorful trees and it wasn't until you got up close that you could see the numbers that make up the tree. Another cool exhibit was a giant piece of paper that had a pencil drawing on it. What was interesting to me was that it was unfinished. I don't know if the artist did this on purpose or if he was trying to send a message to the viewer. This same exhibit also surprised me because you could walk right up to it, there was nothing separating you from touching the art.

My time at the Hammer Museum was a lot of fun. I went in there no knowing what to expect but I had the expectation that it wouldn't be very much fun. I was beyond wrong. The chairs and ping pong tables kept me entertained as did the art. I really enjoyed seeing what we are learning about in a tangible way. It's one thing to talk about the relation of Art and Math but to see it in person really helped me understand what we had learned. I am counting down the days unit I go to my next event for this class!