“LA Times: You hired wHY Architecture’s Kulapat Yantrasast and Brian Butterfield to design the gallery interiors, and you’ve reimagined the museum’s core exhibition. How has it changed?
Director of the Academy Museum, Bill Kramer: We wanted to move away from a chronological march through film history and build something that is more dynamic, surprising, diverse and engaging. Our core exhibition is being designed in such a way that stories can change over time. So we’ll be able to swap out vignettes on movie artists and movies, create a new room on the art of moviemaking around a different movie, add to the Academy Awards history galley, move costumes in and out because we want to tell a lot of diverse stories over time. Every eight to 12 months, 20% of this will shift. So you’re constantly seeing new things as you come back.
It’s important to note that it’s called ‘Stories of Cinema.’ There’s many stories of cinema. There’s not one history of film. Many voices, many movie artists, many narratives. And in all these areas we’re celebrating the history of the movies, but we’re also talking about complicated stories.
LA Times: Such as?
Bill Kramer Hattie McDaniel winning in 1940 for “Gone With the Wind.” She was best supporting actress, but she had to sit in the back of the ceremony because it was a segregated area. We want to face that head on. We want that here.”
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