Andrew W. Mellon Project Manager for Digital Initiatives

Overview of the Mellon Grant This September, the Hammer Museum at UCLA received a substantial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop dynamic digital content based on the strengths of our collections, exhibitions, and programs as well as complementary resources and research from the University of California, Los Angeles. The project will enable the Hammer to initiate a new practice of developing digital content for our website that will document and extend the accessibility and reach of our work and create more effective platforms for research, education, artistic practice, and audience engagement. This initiative will be driven by the curatorial department but will encompass a number of departments across the museum and UCLA. The Hammer anticipates expending all funds between October 2013 and June 30, 2016. Project Goals: • Develop an infrastructure for the continued aggregation of content related to Hammer exhibitions and collections; • Establish a robust and accessible digital content model that interprets the Hammer’s distinctive intersections between historical and contemporary art practice; • Transform the way in which the Hammer documents and presents the research, conceptualization, and implementation of its exhibitions by treating exhibitions as ongoing speculative research processes that engage and benefit scholarly audiences; • Create a digital presence that encompasses a wide range of artistic modes and practices, from Rembrandt to social practice art, and offers new insights and solutions to the logistical and theoretical limitations of presenting and preserving works of art that are not considered object-based in the traditional sense, but instead rely on performative, participatory or time-based practices; • Draw upon UCLA’s extensive resources in the areas of humanities scholarship, digital media, and archival practices to help us research, curate, and present information on the Hammer’s website; • Provide significant new opportunities for UCLA faculty and students to collaborate with the Hammer across multiple arenas; • Create a deeper and more dynamic online presence for the research and scholarship produced by our exhibition program, documenting not only the preliminary research for the exhibition, but also presenting and preserving the scholarly engagement created during the exhibition’s presentation and its aftermath; • Develop a new model of virtual content curation and interpretation that engages museum staff across all programmatic departments as well as our Artist Council advisory board and our artists in residence; • Enhance the museum’s capacity and infrastructure for sustained work in the field of digital humanities.