Art World: Getty To Honor Annie Philbin Who In Turn Supports NPR; Wooden Elephants Migrate Across Bevery Hills; Noah Davis At the Hammer

Forbes

4 days ago

Getty Trust Honors Annie Philbin
Ann Philbin Photo by Mark Hanauer, courtesy of the Getty Trust
Ann Philbin, who during her 25-year tenure built the Hammer into the contemporary art mecca it is today, has been chosen by the J. Paul Getty Trust as this year's Getty Prize recipient.
Past recipients include Lord Jacob Rothschild, Frank Gehry and Mark Bradford. Beginning with Bradford the Prize has included a $500,000 donation from the Getty Trust to the charity or non-profit of the awardee's choice. Annie Philbin has selected the Los Angeles branches of NPR (KCRW and LAist).
Philbin, NPR, KCRW, and LAist will be celebrated at the annual Getty Prize dinner on September 29, 2025, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Wooden Elephants Migrate across Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
The Great Elephant Migration Arrives in Beverly Hills Photo by Elisa Ferrari, Courtesy of Quinn PR
On view until August 1, these 100 life-sized elephant sculptures are handcrafted by indigenous artists from the Nigri Hills in India. The exhibition has already traveled across the United States beginning in Newport, Rhode Island and traveling across the South and Southwest.
The Elephants are also a fundraising project — supporting conservation and the coexistence of animals and humans — you can make a donation here, or you can purchase an elephant (it takes four to six months for your elephant to be carved), and each elephant is twinned with an NGO such as Save the Elephants and the International Wildlife Coexistence Network. Among the carved elephant migration project supporters who are listed as 'matriarchs' on their site are Wallis Annenberg, Cher, Diane Von Furstenberg, and (coincidentally) Ann Philbin. Find out more here.
Noah Davis at the Hammer
Noah Davis, 1975 (8), 2013. Oil on canvas in artist's frame. 49 1/2 × 72 1/2 in. (125.7 × 184.2 cm). Private collection. Photo: Kerry McFate © David Zwirner/ Courtesy of the Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner.
Noah Davis, who died of cancer at 32, was an artist whose work on view at the Hammer we can see evolving before our eyes. Like Jack Whitten, Davis was a restless creative spirit who was always exploring the meaning of Art and how to link Black Artists to their community (he had a series called 'the missing link'). Davis in his work pursued a number of themes and idea. He has a series that was influenced by Ancient Egyptian myth and history.
His work is rich in figures from everyday life, recalling artists from Leon Kossoff to Amy Sherald. As his style changes so does the emotional content of the work. One series portrays family life. Another, a series called 1975, is based on a roll of film that his mother shot in that year, and that he discovered undeveloped and that inspired him to see the world through her point of view.
In 2012, Davis and his wife artist Karon Davis, founded the Underground Museum (UM) in LA , that was meant to make accessible how people approached and bought art. At the Hammer Museum beautiful benches made by UM supporter Lianne Barnes for UM are installed in each room as part of the Hammer exhibition.
At the Hammer there is a room based on one UM's shows called Imitation of Wealth, where Davis appropriates work made by Jeff Koons, Dan Flavin and Duchamp by creating simulacrums of their work, as a commentary on how the artworld can create value in the everyday and also as a commentary on what is and is not allowed to Black artists artistically and commercially.
Noah Davis at work, Los Angeles, 2009, Photo by Patrick O'Brien-Smith
The exhibition also features a series of drawings, sketches, and collages Davis made in a notebook as he was having chemo. His creativity is as evident as is the race against time which he faced and lost. In the Hammer exhibition, we are seeing the work of a young artist so full of talent and creativity. We will never know what may have been, but at the Hammer we can appreciate all that Noah Davis did create.