The Hammer Museum has named Michael Wellen and José Luis Blondet as co-curators of Made in L.A. 2027, placing two museum leaders with international experience and extensive ties to Southern California’s arts community in charge of the eighth edition of the Los Angeles biennial.

The exhibition is expected to open at the UCLA-affiliated museum in fall 2027. The Hammer has not announced a specific opening date, participating artists, commissions or an organizing theme, leaving those elements to emerge as Wellen and Blondet conduct research across the region’s studios, galleries, museums, nonprofit spaces and artist-run organizations.

Made in L.A. presents new and recent work by artists living or working in greater Los Angeles, frequently emphasizing emerging and under-recognized figures. Since the biennial began in 2012, it has developed into one of the Hammer’s signature programs and a recurring survey of artistic production across a geographically dispersed cultural landscape.

Wellen became the Hammer’s chief curator in April 2026. He previously served as senior curator of international art at Tate Modern in London, where he organized major exhibitions involving Takis, Lubaina Himid and Philip Guston. He also worked on Tate’s recently opened Ana Mendieta exhibition and oversaw aspects of the museum’s free collection displays.

His earlier career included serving as assistant curator of Latin American and Latino art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from 2011 to 2016. Wellen holds graduate degrees in modern and contemporary art, with an academic focus on Latin America, and was awarded a Center for Curatorial Leadership fellowship in 2024.

Blondet is a senior curator at MOCA, where he has organized exhibitions including “Olafur Eliasson: OPEN,” “MOCA Focus: Ana Segovia” and “Fictions of Display.” His forthcoming MOCA projects include an exhibition by Venezuelan artist Alexander Apóstol and “Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water,” developed with Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña.

Before joining MOCA, Blondet spent 13 years at LACMA, working on exhibitions, commissions and performance projects with artists including Raven Chacon, Liz Glynn, Mapa Teatro, María Nordman and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. His LACMA projects included a Magdalena Suarez Frimkess exhibition and “Not I: Throwing Voices,” which examined works across the museum’s collection through the concept of ventriloquism.

Blondet has also worked outside Los Angeles as a guest curator. His credits include a Ragnar Kjartansson exhibition at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and the 2018 SITElines biennial at SITE Santa Fe, organized with Candice Hopkins and Ruba Katrib. Earlier positions included roles at the Dia Art Foundation and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in his native Venezuela.

The pairing follows a model used throughout Made in L.A.’s history, in which two curators—often one based at the Hammer and another with strong connections to the broader arts community—develop the exhibition through extended engagement with artists. That structure can produce a conversation between institutional viewpoints while widening the range of studios and creative networks considered for inclusion.

Hammer Museum Director Zoë Ryan said the biennial has served for more than a decade as a meeting point for Los Angeles artists. In announcing the appointments, she emphasized Wellen’s and Blondet’s records of close collaboration with artists and their ability to build exhibition frameworks around artists’ ideas.

The curators enter the project at a moment when Los Angeles institutions are reassessing how they represent a vast regional art scene shaped by immigration, independent spaces, university programs, commercial galleries, entertainment industries and communities extending well beyond established cultural districts. The 2027 edition will inevitably be watched for how broadly it defines Los Angeles and how it balances established practices with artists receiving major museum exposure for the first time.

The biennial’s history provides the curators with a flexible format rather than a fixed survey model. Made in L.A. exhibitions have included painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, sound, music and performance, alongside newly commissioned work. Individual editions have adopted distinct themes and research methods while retaining an emphasis on artistic activity rooted in the region.

The inaugural 2012 edition was organized by curators from the Hammer and LAXART. Later editions paired figures including Connie Butler and Michael Ned Holte in 2014, Aram Moshayedi and Hamza Walker in 2016, and Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale in 2018.

The 2020 edition was organized by Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler with Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi and was presented in partnership with the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. The 2023 exhibition, titled “Acts of Living,” was organized by Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez. Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha organized the 2025 edition.

The Hammer said the series grew from its earlier Hammer Invitational exhibitions, which were presented every two years from 2001 through 2011. Those exhibitions established a recurring institutional mechanism for examining contemporary work before Made in L.A. formalized the museum’s locally focused biennial structure.

For artists, selection can bring sustained museum visibility, new commissions, scholarly attention and exposure to curators and audiences outside Los Angeles. For the museum, each edition serves as both an exhibition and a record of creative activity during a specific period, documenting practices that may not yet be fully represented in permanent collections or conventional art histories.

Wellen and Blondet’s backgrounds suggest particular strengths in multidisciplinary work, artist-centered exhibition development and practices connected to Latin America and its diasporas. Their appointments do not, however, establish a theme or predict which artists will appear. The Hammer’s announcement focused on their professional records and the broader purpose of the biennial rather than providing details about the direction of their research.

The next major milestones are likely to include the exhibition title, participating-artist roster and opening schedule. Until those announcements arrive, the appointment confirms that planning is underway for a 2027 edition positioned to examine Los Angeles art through both local institutional knowledge and an international curatorial lens.