The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles announced two senior leadership appointments today: Michael Wellen will be chief curator, and Regan Pro will be chief of learning, engagement, and research, a newly created role. Wellen begins at the museum on April 6, while Pro will start on March 2.
The chief curatorship at the Hammer, which oversees the museum’s contemporary art exhibitions and collection, publications, and registrar and preparator teams, has been vacant since 2023, when Connie Butler departed the museum to serve as the director of MoMA PS1 in New York. The new learning, engagement, and research role will put the Hammer’s public programming, community partnerships, and educational initiatives under one department.
“Filling these two positions has really been my top priority since arriving at the beginning of last year,” Hammer director Zoë Ryan told ARTnews in a phone interview, noting that she spent that period “getting to know the institution to understand what was needed from these two positions.”
The two roles form the museum’s leadership, alongside Ryan as director and Naoko Takahatake, the director and chief curator of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, which is housed at the Hammer. In filling the positions, Ryan was focused on how “all three would work together in synergy with one another,” she said.
During this introductory period, Ryan said she would ask people what made the Hammer special. Often, they would reply that it was both their influential exhibition program, which includes the Made in L.A. biennial and canon-shifting exhibitions like “Now Dig This!” and “Radical Women,” and “they would quickly follow up with how incredible the public program is at the Hammer,” Ryan said. “One of the things that struck me when I came to the Hammer was the deep, meaningful work, absolutely rooted in Los Angeles and the region, that the public programs team was creating.”
Ryan said that the creation of this new role and department is aimed to bring together two teams so “they can work more synergistically” and with an “expanded purview. The goal, she said, is to find “what we can contribute to the field that’s different from any other institution,” describing the approach as “both intellectual and hands-on.”
Pro was most recently deputy director of public programs and social impact at the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which is scheduled to open next year. Pro was laid off from her position at the Lucas last May as part of an overall restructuring of the museum that primarily impacted its education teams. Prior to her role at the Lucas, she had been the deputy director of education and public engagement at the Seattle Art Museum.
“Regan brings an incredible sensitivity, excitement, and an openness to exploration,” Ryan said. “She has a consistent record of developing programs that emphasize social impact, and equitable access to the arts and education. These are core values of the Hammer.”
Wellen, who is specialist on modern and contemporary Latin American art, comes to the Hammer from Tate Modern, where he is senior curator of international art. He is currently organizing a major retrospective of Ana Mendieta, which will open at the museum in July. He also worked on Tate Modern shows for Takis, Lubiana Himid, and Philip Guston.
He previously led Tate’s Latin American Acquisitions committee. Prior to joining Tate in 2016, Wellen was assistant curator of Latin American and Latino art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He completed the Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship in 2024.
“Michael brings this ideal mix where he really knows LA well—and he’s excited to get to know it even more—but at the same time, his position at Tate Modern has given him this great international perspective and knowledge of the scene,” Ryan said. “He’s someone who cares about being experimental and what that means for a place like the Hammer.”
