Zoë Ryan to Succeed Longtime Hammer Museum Director Ann Philbin

Zoë Ryan, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (ICA Philadelphia), has been named the next leader of the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ryan succeeds Ann Philbin, who announced her retirement in 2023 after 25 years at the helm of the Los Angeles institution.

According to the announcement, Philbin will depart in November 2024 and Ryan will assume leadership January 1, 2025.

“[Ryan] is a leader known for building support for daring and ambitious projects and her steadfast commitment to artists,” Hammer Museum board chair Marcy Carsey said in a statement, adding “we’re very excited for her to bring these skills to the Hammer.”

Ryan has led the ICA Philadelphia since 2020, during which her accomplishments included the creation of an annual art commission and the development of a strategic new approach for the museum based on community engagement, which had suffered in recent years from a lack of collaboration with local and international art organizations. Perhaps fittingly, she inherits from Philbin a museum at its peak of reinvention.

In 2023 the Hammer Museum revealed the results of architect Michael Maltzan’s decades-long renovations: a new outdoor sculpture terrace, a 5,600-square-foot gallery (converted from a former City National Bank), and a reorientation of its entrance, which Philbin described to ARTnews at the unveiling as “a total gamechanger.” The additional 40,000 square feet of museum space has been framed as an opportunity for the exhibition of large-scale works that snag the public’s attention and reel them in to discover the city’s third-largest collection of contemporary art.

As ARTnews previously noted, at the time of Philbin’s arrival at the Hammer in 1999, an informal audit found that most passerby had no idea where the museum was—even when standing at the entrance.

“With its experimental exhibitions and dynamic public programs, the Hammer has set the pace for museums to engage with the critical issues of our time, whether politics, climate change, and justice and equity for all,” Ryan said in a statement.

She added: “[Philbin] has had an extraordinary impact in making the Hammer an internationally influential institution; I am thrilled and honored to lead this museum and be a part of the vibrant creative communities of Los Angeles.”