Hammer Museum - Collections

Collections

The Hammer contains a small collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. The museum holds over 7500 works by French satirist Honoré Daumier, the largest collection outside of Paris. In recent years, the Hammer has become well known for its collection of contemporary art works on paper. The museum received a gift of 60 American and European drawings from the collection of lyricist Hal David and his wife, Eunice, in 2003, adding a trove of 19th and 20th century works by a wide range of artists -- from Pablo Picasso and Fernand Leger to California painter Richard Diebenkorn. In 2007, the museum was chosen by Colorado developer Larry Marx and his wife, Susan, to inherit their collection of drawings and other works on paper by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and other major figures of the post-World War II era. It also has fine paintings by Rembrandt, Titian, and Chardin. The Hammer today manages a complex group of art holdings, including the collections amassed by Armand Hammer, and UCLA's Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, a 45,000-piece graphic arts trove.