A temp home for Hammer programs

The UCLA Hammer Museum will temporarily move public programs to a venue a block north of the museum while its new Billy Wilder Theater is under construction.

The Hammer Annex, at 1083-1087 Broxton Ave. near Westwood Boulevard, will seat 288 people and will serve as the 2006 home for readings, artists’ lectures, film screenings and other events previously held in the museum’s Gallery 6. Patrons may continue to park at the Hammer.

The program lineup will include performances of artist Don Graham’s live puppet rock opera “Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty” (Feb. 10 through 12) and Sunday Afternoons, a new series of children’s workshops. Construction of the Wilder Theater, on the Hammer Museum courtyard level, is expected to last a year, after which the programs will move there.

The theater, an element of the museum’s $26.5-million renovation designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture, will be completed with a $5-million gift from Audrey L. Wilder, wife of the late film director and writer who died in 2002.

The facility will be jointly programmed by the art museum and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

-- Diane Haithman