The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has named the two curators for the next edition of its closely watched Made in L.A. biennial: Michael Wellen and José Luis Blondet. Their edition, the eighth overall, will open in the fall 2027.
Wellen is the recently appointed chief curator of the Hammer, who officially joined the museum in April from Tate Modern. Blondet has been senior curator at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art since 2023, and previously worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for 13 years.
Wellen recently opened his last project at Tate Modern, a lauded retrospective for Ana Mendieta. His prior exhibitions there include monographic exhibitions for Philip Guston (2023), Lubaina Himid (2021), and Takis (2019), as well as commissioning performances and projects by artists like María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Ayoung Kim, Ernesto Salmeron, and Cecilia Vicuña.
At MOCA, Blondet has organized solo shows for Olafur Eliasson and Ana Segovia (both in 2024) and the collection show “Fictions of Display.” This fall, he will open two exhibitions: an exhibition on Alexander Apóstol’s 2018 photographic series “Regime: Dramatis Personae” and a commission by Cecilia Vicuña entitled Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water. At LACMA, he mounted exhibitions and organized performances from a range of artists, including Raven Chacon, Liz Glynn, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo), and Magdalena Suarez Frimkess.
Wellen approached Blondet about a month after he joined the Hammer and asked if he might consider co-curating the biennial with him. “José Luis is a curator I’ve respected for years,” Wellen told ARTnews in a joint interview. “I thought this would be wonderful partnership because he is so loved by artists and has such a depth of knowledge of LA.”
Blondet is among LA’s most respected curators, having arrived at LACMA in 2010. He recalled seeing the first edition of Made in L.A. in 2012, saying that “it really opened my eyes to the many idiosyncratic methodologies and practices” of LA’s diverse art scene. “I got a lot out of that exhibition, and it’s always been a secret dream of mine to curate a Made in L.A.,” he added.
Wellen and Blondet are just beginning their research for the biennial, which they said would begin with a number of studio visits. “We want to move away from preconceptions and assumptions of what Los Angeles is,” Blondet said, adding that the artists’ practices they encounter and what artists are doing now is what they plan to respond to and come up with a structure for the exhibition. “It’s about getting to be with the artists in the studio and the conversations that manifest from there,” he added.
Wellen agreed, noting that his recent arrival to LA means that his “perspective is potentially different” from Blondet’s and other LA-based curators who have organized past editions.
Blondet previously co-curated the 2018 edition of “SITElines” at SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, which focused on presenting a biennial that looked at the Americas from a hemispheric perspective. He joked that that prompt was “less dauting than Los Angeles.” Wellen hasn’t organized a biennial previously, but he said that the timeline and structure of how he worked on Tate Modern’s free collection displays offers him a “parallel experience” to the biennial structure that he plans to draw on.
While the art world often talks about the necessity of biennials the world over, Wellen and Blondet said they are still excited by the biennial model. “It’s exciting to look at different biennials—no two are the same,” Wellen said. “It’s amazing how important Made in L.A. continues to be, both for the city and far beyond the city, in terms of the creative conservations happening now and how that creates reaction and debate locally and globally.”
“There’s a promise of continuity [in a biennial] as there will be another exhibition, another conversation in two years,” Blondet said. “It’s about presenting a take, not the final take or the definitive take, but one small moment with specific actors that are particular to that moment. A biennial is never the final version of anything.”
Wellen added, “The model is very open.”
