Hammer Museum welcomes key leadership additions

The Hammer Museum at UCLA has made two major leadership appointments that will shape the museum's curatorial vision and public engagement strategy. Michael Wellen has been named chief curator and Regan Pro will assume the newly created role of chief of learning, engagement and research.

Reporting to Hammer Director Zoë Ryan, Wellen and Pro join the museum's senior leadership team alongside Naoko Takahatake, director and chief curator of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. Together, they will help guide the Hammer's exhibitions, collections, scholarship and public programs.

Wellen currently serves as senior curator of international art at Tate Modern, where he has worked since 2016. During his tenure, he organized critically acclaimed solo exhibitions for Canadian painter Philip Guston (2023), British painter and pioneer of the British Black Art Movement from the 1980s, Lubaina Himid (2021), and a retrospective of Greek sculptor and innovator Takis (2019, co-curated with Guy Brett). Wellen is finalizing a major exhibition on multidisciplinary Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta, scheduled to open in 2026. As chief curator at the Hammer, Wellen will oversee contemporary exhibitions and collections, museum publications and the registrar and preparator teams.

Pro is a seasoned arts leader and educator who was most recently the inaugural deputy director of public programs and social impact at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Previously, she spent more than a decade at the Seattle Art Museum, where she served as the Kayla Skinner deputy director of education and public engagement, leading initiatives centered on learning, access and community partnership. At the Hammer, Pro will lead the strategic vision for the museum's public programs, community collaborations and its K-12, family and university initiatives.

"Michael and Regan bring deep commitments to artists, audiences, scholarship, and experimentation," said Ryan. "Their leadership will strengthen the Hammer's impact locally and internationally."

Wellen will begin April 6, and Pro will begin March 2.

Read the full release for complete biographies and additional details.