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The Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures Opens To The Public

An aerial view of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.
An aerial view of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

Decades after work began in earnest to open a museum dedicated to movies in Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures has opened. It cost nearly $500 million and showcases some of Hollywood’s most memorable set-pieces, like Dorothy’s ruby red slippers and the shark from “Jaws.”

It also showcases the diversity of the movie industry, which the Academy Awards historically have not. Manohla Dargis reviewed the museum for The New York Times:

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.

The 1A Movie Club’s unofficial vice-president John Horn walks us through the new museum.

Copyright 2021 WAMU 88.5

Avery Kleinman