The Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has picked the leader of a major university art museum on the East Coast as its next director. Zoë Ryan, who since 2020 has been the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, will succeed the Hammer’s longtime director Ann Philbin, who is retiring next month. Ryan’s first day in her new job will be 1 January 2025.
“With its experimental exhibitions and dynamic public programmes, the Hammer has set the pace for museums to engage with the critical issues of our time, whether politics, climate change or justice and equity for all,” Ryan said in a statement. “Annie Philbin has had an extraordinary impact in making the Hammer an internationally influential institution; I am thrilled and honoured to lead this museum and be a part of the vibrant creative communities of Los Angeles.”
During her time at the ICA, Ryan oversaw a major exhibition devoted to the pioneering video artist Ulysses Jenkins, which subsequently travelled to the Hammer. Prior to her stint in Philadelphia, Ryan was the Art Institute of Chicago’s chair and curator of architecture and design from 2006 to 2020. She also curated the Istanbul Design Biennial’s second edition in 2014.
“Her cross-disciplinary curiosity and intellectual rigour will undoubtedly enrich the creative and intellectual fabric of our school and campus, and we’re confident that her leadership will take the Hammer Museum to new heights,” Lionel Popkin, the interim dean of UCLA’s school of the arts and architecture, said in a statement.
Ryan arrives at the Hammer after a period of extensive transformation at the museum. In the spring of 2023, it completed a 24-year expansion and renovation, as well as a $180m capital campaign. “There isn’t a single surface in the museum, not one square inch, that hasn’t been touched,” Philbin told The Art Newspaper at the time. “The renovation was led by both aesthetic concerns and the goal to create a more accessible, open and inviting space.” Shortly thereafter, the museum’s chief curator, Connie Butler, was hired to be the next director of MoMA PS1 in New York. Philbin announced her retirement in October 2023.
