The New York Times Reports: Movie Museum Rethinks Exhibitions in Response to a Changing World

“How do you make a museum about an industry even as the industry is changing? How do you represent a history when that history is full of omissions?

This is the challenge facing the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which has been in the works since 2012 and – after several delays, the most recent of which was caused by the pandemic – is finally scheduled to open on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in September.

While the 300,000-square-foot, $482 million museum, designed by Renzo Piano, has been under construction, the movie business has been going through a process of deconstruction, brought about by seismic social movements like #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter. Recognition of the obstacles faced by female directors, Asian American Actors, and other groups has also intensified.

As a result, the museum’s new director and president, Bill Kramer – who in 2019 replaced the museum’s founding director, Kerry Brougher – has used the last two years to rethink and redefine the exhibition spaces, making sure to acknowledge the flawed history of film and give women as well as people of color their due.

A new gallery on the history of the Oscars by year, for example, has wraparound screens that present significant acceptance speeches like those by Hattie McDaniel (“Gone With the Wind”), the first Black actor to win an Oscar, who was forced to sit at a segregated table at the ceremony; Bong Joon Ho, director of the South Korean film “Parasite”; and the only two women to win best director, Chloe Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow…”

-Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times