Hammer Museum receives $50 million in gifts for expansion
In yet another major infusion of cash for Los Angeles' art museums, the Hammer announced on Thursday the largest gift in its history: $30 million from L.A. philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick to help pay for an ambitious renovation and expansion.
The museum will still be called the Hammer, but its building will be renamed the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Cultural Center. The project is scheduled to be completed in two years.
The Hammer also announced that board chairwoman Marcy Carsey has donated $20 million, a gift made about a year ago but not made public until now.
Together, those gifts will anchor a $180 million capital campaign, also announced by the Hammer on Thursday. About $80 million of that money is earmarked for the building transformation, which will expand gallery space by about 60%, and the rest of the funds will go toward the museum's exhibitions, programming and endowment.
Beyond the Resnick and Carsey gifts, the museum said it raised $82 million last year, bringing the campaign to $132 million.
"We're so excited. It's unfolded really quickly, so much faster than I thought it would," museum Director Ann Philbin said. "I just feel incredibly gratified how everybody has stepped up and so generously."
The gifts to the Hammer are a sign of "philanthropic health" in Los Angeles, Philbin said.
"A lot of my donors are just people who are really just great citizens of our city," she said. "They know that any great city must have thriving institutions — and they want to make sure that happens.
"It's amazing and it's real and it has longevity and it has legs," she added of arts philanthropy in L.A. "It's not a flash as people feared it might be. It's clearly something sustainable — and really exciting."
Last year David Geffen gave $150 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art toward its $650 million campaign for a new Peter Zumthor-designed building — the largest gift on record for the construction of a U.S. museum.
That followed Elaine Wynn's pledge of $50 million to LACMA's fundraising campaign in 2016; that same year, the museum was promised gifts of $25 million each from billionaire A. Jerrold Perenchio and Eric and Susan Smidt, founders of Harbor Freight Tools.
The Museum of Contemporary Art board raised about $100 million in 2013 for MOCA's then-waning endowment. In 2015, artists donated works for an auction that brought in $22.5 million for the endowment. Last year, MOCA unveiled its Getty Plaza at the Geffen Contemporary satellite location, courtesy of $5 million from Aileen Getty.