SAN DIEGO.- The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) are pleased to announce the joint acquisition of a major new sculptural work by Los Angeles-based artist Nathan Mabry. By combining resources, the two museums have been able to purchase Mabry’s 2008 bronze sculpture Process Art (Dead Men Don't Make Sculpture), which will be first exhibited in front of MCASD’s La Jolla location from May 12, 2008 to May 2009 and then shown at the Hammer Museum in the summer of 2009.
In a joint statement, Hugh Davies, The David C. Copley Director of MCASD, and Ann Philbin, Director of the Hammer, stated: “We are extremely pleased to announce this successful partnership. Through collaboration, we both are able to strengthen our collections and expose both of our museums’ audiences to exciting new work by talented, emerging artists in our region.”

Mabry’s work often fuses references to classic modern art and the art of tribal and ancient civilizations of the Americas. In this sculpture, Mabry purchased an unauthorized cast of Rodin’s sculpture, The Thinker, through the Internet,
removed its patina, and then repatinated it and overlaid the sculpture with a bronze cast of an altered latex mask. Large in scale, the sculpture is both unsettling and humorous, irreverent and yet carefully wrought and conceptually complex.

This new sculpture joins 10 other works by the artist already in the Hammer Contemporary Collection, including six photographs, three drawings, and another major sculpture given by Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson.

The joint purchase of Process Art (Dead Men Don't Make Sculpture) was made possible, in part, by Hammer Board of Overseers Member and MCASD Trustee Murray A. Gribin.

Gribin has served on the Hammer Board of Overseers since 2004. He has served as a trustee at MCASD since 1976 and has been extremely generous in both donating and underwriting works of art for the Museum’s collection, including works by Alfred Jensen, Ken Price, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Jasper Johns, Ed Kienholz, Tim Bavington, and Robert Irwin. Gribin and his late wife Ruth amassed a stunning collection of Southern California artists’ work from the 1960s to the present, which was featured in the 2006 MCASD exhibition, La Dolce Vita.

Nathan Mabry received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. His work was most recently on view in a solo exhibition from March 1 to April 5, 2008, at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. The artist’s work has been featured in several group exhibitions, including Red Eye: Los Angeles Artists from the Rubell Family Collection at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Florida (2006) and Thing: New Sculpture from Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2005).

Mabry will be featured in upcoming exhibitions at ZERO in Milan, Italy and Apocalypse Yesterday at the Claremont Graduate University galleries in Claremont, California.