Michael Armand Hammer, businessman and father of Armie Hammer, died Sunday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 67.
Hammer’s death was confirmed to People and TMZ.
Hammer was known for his involvement with Occidental Petroleum Corporation, the company of his late grandfather, oil tycoon Armand Hammer. He also oversaw the Hammer International Foundation, the Armand Hammer Foundation, Hammer Galleries and Hammer Productions.
Prior to joining Occidental Petroleum in 1982, he worked in various roles at the investment banking firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York.
Born on Sept. 8, 1955, in Los Angeles, Calif., Hammer is the son of Glenna Sue Ervin and Julian Armand Hammer. He graduated from the University of San Diego in 1978, and later earned his Mba from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1982.
Hammer and his ex-wife Dru Ann Mobley had two children together: actor Armie Hammer, 36, and businessman Viktor Hammer, 34. He and Mobley were married for 27 years,...
Hammer’s death was confirmed to People and TMZ.
Hammer was known for his involvement with Occidental Petroleum Corporation, the company of his late grandfather, oil tycoon Armand Hammer. He also oversaw the Hammer International Foundation, the Armand Hammer Foundation, Hammer Galleries and Hammer Productions.
Prior to joining Occidental Petroleum in 1982, he worked in various roles at the investment banking firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York.
Born on Sept. 8, 1955, in Los Angeles, Calif., Hammer is the son of Glenna Sue Ervin and Julian Armand Hammer. He graduated from the University of San Diego in 1978, and later earned his Mba from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1982.
Hammer and his ex-wife Dru Ann Mobley had two children together: actor Armie Hammer, 36, and businessman Viktor Hammer, 34. He and Mobley were married for 27 years,...
- 11/23/2022
- by Michaela Zee
- Variety Film + TV
There’s a spectacular contradiction at the heart of art forgery. Forgeries, which pretend to be paintings by timeless artists, hang in museums all over the world; there are more of them than anyone knows, all hiding in plain sight. When a case of forgery comes to light, it tends to be greeted with moral outrage. The act of imitating a famous artist’s work, and profiting off it, is seen as a sleazy low-life con, as well as a major crime. Yet art forgery isn’t just about the eye candy of duplicity and profit. As Orson Welles caught in his jump-cut meditation “F for Fake” (1973), there’s a fantasy behind it: What if you had the daring, and the talent, to produce a fake work of art so drop-dead authentic that no one alive could tell it was fake? There’s an audacity to that, a kind of grand illusion.
- 2/24/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Barry Avrich’s art scandal documentary “Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art” is being adapted into a feature film by the director’s Melbar Entertainment Group (“David Foster: Off The Record”).
The documentary tells the story of how one of the most respected art galleries in New York City became the center of the largest art fraud in American history. Knoedler & Company, under its president, Ann Freedman, made millions selling previously unseen works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and others that had supposedly come from a secret collection. But when her prestigious clients discovered they had purchased fakes, the scandal rocked the art world. Avrich secured unprecedented access to Freedman, her clients and other key players for the documentary.
The film has played Hot Docs and the Hamptons International Film Festival and will feature at the upcoming Doc NYC in November. Fremantle is handling international sales.
The documentary tells the story of how one of the most respected art galleries in New York City became the center of the largest art fraud in American history. Knoedler & Company, under its president, Ann Freedman, made millions selling previously unseen works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and others that had supposedly come from a secret collection. But when her prestigious clients discovered they had purchased fakes, the scandal rocked the art world. Avrich secured unprecedented access to Freedman, her clients and other key players for the documentary.
The film has played Hot Docs and the Hamptons International Film Festival and will feature at the upcoming Doc NYC in November. Fremantle is handling international sales.
- 10/23/2020
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
If the events of the art world aren’t on your radar, you might have missed the late-2000s scandal that enveloped the Knoedler & Co. gallery in Manhattan, one of the oldest art galleries in the country, run by gallery president Ann Freedman. The gallery closed, Freedman resigned, and several people were sent to jail. The story itself remains remarkable, involving Freedman and a horde of fraudulent paintings said to be by storied artists like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko. Articles and articles were written across publications, art-focused and not. And of course, inevitable documentaries followed, including the Hot Docs 2020 hit Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art and its counterpart and the focus of this review, Driven to Abstraction.
Driven to Abstraction, the new doc from Daria Price, reads like an in-depth news article, one you’d read in a major art magazine. It features a plethora of talking heads,...
Driven to Abstraction, the new doc from Daria Price, reads like an in-depth news article, one you’d read in a major art magazine. It features a plethora of talking heads,...
- 8/27/2020
- by Michael Frank
- The Film Stage
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