Over eight years after it was first announced, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is finally set to debut in Los Angeles. The original opening date—December 14, 2020—was declared last year during the live telecast of the 92nd Academy Awards by actor Tom Hanks, a trustee and cochair of the Academy Museum. (Because . . . how else?) However, similar to many other museum openings and exhibitions in 2020, the Academy Museum’s debut was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, at long last, the highly anticipated Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will open on September 30, 2021—and tickets go on sale starting August 5.
The 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater, designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano, will be part of a new spherical addition connected to the Saban Building by glass bridges.
©Renzo Piano Building Workshop/©Academy Museum Foundation/Image from Cristiano Zaccaria
When it opens in the former May Company Building (now the Saban Building) on Wilshire Boulevard, the six-floor Academy Museum will be what organizers call “the world’s premiere institution devoted to exploring the art and science of movies and moviemaking.”
Located in Los Angeles’s Miracle Mile district near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the renovated and expanded building designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano will feature multiple gallery and event spaces, plus an on-site café and store. There will also be a state-of-the-art education studio, two film and performance theaters, and a 1,000-seat domed theater (connected to the Saban Building via glass bridges) where regular screenings and major film events will be held. What’s more: A new, rooftop terrace atop the spherical structure will offer sweeping views of the nearby Hollywood hills.
Inside the museum, organizers say, motion picture–focused exhibitions will “give visitors an unprecedented opportunity to peer behind the screen and into the world of moviemaking through the lens of those who make them.” Permanent and rotating displays will pull from the Academy Museum’s holdings of approximately 2,500 items relevant to early and modern motion picture technology, costume and production design, makeup and hairstyling, and more. According to a press release, the museum will also draw from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s impressive collection, which includes more than 12 million photographs, 190,000 film and video assets, 80,000 screenplays, 61,000 posters, and 104,000 pieces of production art sourced from the archives of film legends such as Katharine Hepburn and Alfred Hitchcock.
The Academy Museum’s galleries will showcase artifacts such as the pair of ruby slippers designed by Adrian Adolph Greenburg for the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”
Photo by Joshua White, JWPictures/©A.M.P.A.S.
Visitors to the Academy Museum can expect to see film-related artifacts such as Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (1939) and the only surviving full-size shark model from the original mold used in Jaws (1975). Displays will also showcase a variety of early and modern filmmaking equipment, such as the original “Steadicam” camera stabilizer invented by Garrett Brown, which was first used to film Bound for Glory (1976).
Accessories from popular films known for their distinctive costumes, such as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1992) and Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) will also be part of various exhibitions. Additionally, the press release states that a number of Academy Award statuettes donated back to the Academy by Oscar winners and their heirs will be on view for museumgoers, among them the miniature Oscar presented to Shirley Temple at the 1934 Academy Awards.
The Juvenile Oscar® awarded to Shirley Temple in 1934, gifted by Shirley Temple Black and Family in 2013, will be among the museum artifacts on display.
Photo by Joshua White, JWPictures/©A.M.P.A.S.
After the Academy Museum opens this September, the new Los Angeles institution will also feature temporary rotating exhibitions, starting with a retrospective on Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese animation titan behind films such as Spirited Away (2001) and The Wind Rises (2013), which the museum claims is the first of its kind of the United States. In 2022, another special exhibition will focus on the “important and underrecognized history of African American filmmakers in the development of American cinema,” according to the museum’s website.
While the museum’s opening date may have been delayed, Hanks’s initial statements during the 2020 Oscars ceremony still ring true: After noting that Los Angeles has hosted a selfie museum, but that “there has never been a museum dedicated to the art and science of motion pictures” in the city with such close ties to cinema, the actor stated: “It’s going to be a very big deal.”
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ rooftop Dolby Family Terrace will showcase views of the nearby Hollywood hills.
©Renzo Piano Building Workshop/©Academy Museum Foundation/Image from Cristiano Zaccaria
How to get tickets to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Timed advanced admission tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. PDT on August 5, 2021, at academymuseum.org. Admission is $25 for adults, $19 for seniors (age 62+), and $15 for students. Children under 17 enter for free.
The museum will be open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
This article originally appeared online in February 2020; it was updated on February 3, 2o21, and again on July 21, 2021, to include current information.
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