Before you get too excited, no, it is not a museum of hammers. When I first saw the museum in Los Angeles’ Westwood area, I thought how great to have a museum on hammers – battle hammers or maybe even Thor’s Hammers!
Alas, that was not the case, but you should visit it anyway if you are in the area. The Hammer Museum houses some of the art collected by the late Armand Hammer, who was an American industrialist (no, Armand Hammer did not create the Arm and Hammer baking soda). He collected art his entire life, and amassed a very large collection. This museum displays some works from his collection and rotates through other exhibitions. On Thursdays there is free admission, so this is a prime time to visit.
From Hammer’s private collection, we saw paintings by French 19th century masters, other European master paintings, and 18th-20th century American artists. There were van Goghs, Monets, a Rubens, and very nice Rembrandts, including Rembrandt’s Juno and Portrait of a Man Holding a Black Hat.
There was also an exhibition of 17th-19th century advertisements called broadsides that depicted showings like Toby the sapient pig, a dulcimer player with no arms, the real-life Tom Thumb, and fortune telling ponies.
There was also a modern art media exhibition showing, for example, a guy pushing a block of ice through a city until it melted.
There are many events held at the museum throughout the year, and the museum itself is managed by UCLA.