LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Hammer Museum at UCLA announced its Spring 2026 exhibitions lineup, featuring four diverse and interdisciplinary shows: Arthur Jafa: The White Album, an experimental film about the power of visual media to influence Black music and the American culture; SPACE IS THE PLACE: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, an exploration of afro- futurism, belonging, and placemaking through works by 30 artists; Hammer Projects: Mike Cloud, mixed- media assemblages that highlight contemporary social and political issues; and Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials, an ambitious exhibition revealing the intertwined relationship between living materials and contemporary art.

ARTHUR JAFA: THE WHITE ALBUM
March 14–August 30, 2026

Assembled from found and produced footage, Arthur Jafa’s The White Album is a 30 minute experimental film that examines how visual media can transmit the “power, beauty, and alienation” of Black music in American culture. Following his critically acclaimed film Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016), The White Album is a social critique of whiteness. The film collages digital media into a radical visual and literary mixtape that articulates the ways in which the vitality and survival of Black American people—their labor, ideas, and cultural output—are historically co-opted by the white culture though coercion and violence. The White Album was originally presented at the 2019 Venice Biennale, for which Jafa received the Golden Lion Award.

Arthur Jafa: The White Album is organized by Erin Christovale, curator, with Azul Silverio, curatorial assistant.

SPACE IS THE PLACE: SELECTIONS FROM THE HAMMER CONTEMPORARY COLLECTION
April 5–September 6, 2026

SPACE IS THE PLACE adopts its title from the 1973 studio album and 1974 film by Sun Ra (1914–1993), a Black American experimental jazz composer and musician known for his radical and esoteric views on Black liberation. Featuring more than 30 works from the Hammer Contemporary Collection—including many recent acquisitions on view for the first time—the selected works in the exhibition consider “space” as a conceptual framework, through the themes of afro-futurism, belonging, placemaking, and the act of taking up space. Featuring artists Edgar Arceneaux, Nayland Blake, Mark Bradford, Fred Eversley, Lauren Halsey, Koshin Finley, Betye Saar, Cauleen Smith, and more, this is the first exhibition- scale presentation of the Hammer Contemporary Collection since the critically acclaimed 2023 exhibition Together in Time.

HAMMER PROJECTS: MIKE CLOUD
April 5, 2026–January 7, 2027

Mike Cloud is a Chicago-based artist who explores social and political issues through the visual language of abstraction. Hammer Projects: Mike Cloud, the artist’s first solo museum presentation on the West Coast, will scale the expanse of the museum’s lobby wall and present three “loosely abstracted portraits”—including two commissioned works—collaged from paper grocery bags, magazine advertisements, cash, and other printed materials. Additionally, Cloud will exhibit works from Painted Clothing (2007–08), a series of collages fashioned from children’s clothing, commenting on the relationship between consumer culture and childhood through visual signifiers such as dragons, fairies, and rainbows. Both series speak to the artist’s in-depth experimentation with printmaking, sculpture, and painting across his career.

Hammer Projects: Mike Cloud is organized by Erin Christovale, curator, with Azul Silverio, curatorial assistant.

SEVERAL ETERNITIES IN A DAY: FORM IN THE AGE OF LIVING MATERIALS
April 5–August 23, 2026

Several Eternities in a Day features twenty-two artists from North, Central, and South America who embrace the unpredictable nature of living materials. These artists use materials such as avocado, cacao, achiote, cochineal, stone, clay, and natural dyes to create large-scale installations, paintings, and mixed media sculpture. Each of these materials are alive—they evolve, decay, drip, crumble, evaporate—embodying both history and future encapsulated in a fleeting moment of objecthood.

Among the works in the exhibition are newly commissioned pieces by Carmen Argote, Raven Chacon, Jackie Amézquita, Edgar Calel, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Patricia Dominguez.

Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials is organized by Pablo José Ramírez, curator, with Jessi DiTillio, curatorial assistant.