Three museums form consortium

Three contemporary art museums -- the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York -- have formed a national consortium to commission and exhibit works by emerging artists.

Dubbed the Three M Project and launched with financial support from the American Center and Peter Norton Family foundations, the consortium will pool the museums’ resources in a effort to provide a larger audience for adventurous new art.

In the first round of commissions, the UCLA Hammer chose Patty Chang, who was born in San Francisco and lives in New York, to do a video installation; Chicago’s MCA selected Fiona Tan, an Indonesian artist who resides in Amsterdam, to create a film; and the New Museum picked Dutch artist Aernout Mik, also of Amsterdam, to make a multiscreen video piece.

Their works will be shown at all three museums and featured in a jointly produced publication.

-- Suzanne Muchnic