Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum opened to the public in November 1990. Founded by Dr. Armand Hammer, former Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, the Museum was designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Financed by Occidental, the Museum was built adjacent to the Corporation’s international headquarters in Westwood. At that time, the Museum featured galleries for Dr. Hammer’s collections — old master and nineteenth-century European paintings and drawings, and a collection of works on paper and paintings by Honoré Daumier and his contemporaries — as well as galleries for traveling exhibitions. Dr. Hammer passed away in December 1990, three weeks after the opening of the Museum leaving many spaces unfinished.