The New York Times: The Academy Museum Finds Good Intentions in Messy Film History

“Tucked in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which opened in Los Angeles, is a surprisingly modest exhibit of “significant Oscars.” The museum, after all, is the latest venture of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that each year entertains, inflames and invariably stupefies movie lovers of every taste and critical persuasion with that gaudy bacchanalia of self-love known as the Oscars.

Given the academy’s focus on all things Oscar, its latest production could have played up the event even more than it does. Yet while the awards invariably loom large, as does Hollywood – this is very much an academy endeavor, as the many nods to Steven Spielberg underscore – the long-delayed museum has embraced a tricky, complicated brief to accentuate the positive, to borrow the title of an Oscar-nominated song. The industry’s ugliness, its racism and sexism, is directly addressed, but the emphasis is on diversity and pluralism, not past and present sins. Call it a museum of good intentions.”

– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times