The Frederick Hammersley Foundation was officially dissolved as of April 8, 2022, according to the terms of its founding documents that it sunset within twenty years of Hammersley's death. This website is being maintained to provide information about the Foundation's activities, Frederick Hammersley, and his work. Please note that lists of exhibitions and public collections may not be up to date. Inquiries will continue to be received via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Mission
From 2009 to 2022, the Frederick Hammersley Foundation was dedicated to furthering Frederick Hammersley’s artistic legacy through charitable activities that expand the public's awareness, appreciation, and understanding of his art and life, and of the cultural and art historical context in which he worked. It was also committed to promoting the value of art in the life of the community and to supporting the advancement of artists’ education and creative processes, including support for research and scholarships for art students and other practitioners of the arts.
Activities
The Foundation completed distribution of the nearly 3000 artworks in Frederick Hammersley's estate, with the priority of gifting them to prestigious public collections, and shared its database information about these and other of his artworks with the Archives of American Art so that it will be available to researchers.
Hammersley’s archival materials, unfinished works, and studio materials were gifted to the Archives of American Art, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Artist Materials Collection, and the Albuquerque Museum. More information about the Hammersley collections at these institutions is available on the Archives and Research page.
In 2019, the Foundation donated Hammersley’s home, its contents, and supporting funds to the Albuquerque Community Foundation, to make The Hammersley House available to visiting artists through 2034. Both foundations committed to preserving the ambience and personal touches Hammersley gave to his home of nearly 40 years, as part of his legacy and a way for visiting artists to learn more about his art and life.
The Hammersley House is used primarily by the University of New Mexico Art Department Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist Program, which the Foundation initiated in 2016 and endowed through a fund established at the Albuquerque Community Foundation to support the program through 2034.
In 2020, the Foundation completed assignment of its copyrights to Hammersley works in nearly forty public collections to the individual museums and non-profit organizations that own them. It also executed free non-exclusive licenses with those organizations, which cover their Hammersley prints, photographs, and computer drawings, in order to facilitate reproduction of his works in their collections. All unassigned copyrights and the Foundation's master image files were transferred to the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, which manages permissions and licensing and provides images for approved requests. For more information, please visit our Rights and Reproductions page.
In 2021, the Foundation distributed all its remaining assets to the Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation, a donor-advised endowment fund established by the Foundation in 2019. The purpose of this fund is to perpetuate Frederick Hammersley's artistic legacy and the mission of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation beyond its dissolution by continuing to provide support for the arts, as well as to continue to provide funds to museums and other public institutions for conservation of Hammersley works in their collections through the Conservation Initiative. Further information about this initiative and how to apply for these funds is available here.