![]() ![]() The recommendation I received, which I endorse, is to head to the top floor of the Museum, its fifth floor, and make your way down. Hopefully, over time this landing spot will better develop. The ground floor entrance, which feels unfinished and undefined, also houses a gift shop with all sorts of items specially designed for the museum including toys, furniture, fashion (including an Ariane Phillips/Jeremy Scott Wizard of Oz capsule collection) as well as an Amoeba music pop-up selling soundtracks, and a restaurant, Fanny’s (as in Fanny Brice). So, now on to the Museum: You enter on the ground floor which has a gallery that is open to the public for free, showing a montage of clips from some 700 films on multiple screens that take moviemaking from its earliest incarnations to the present. In this context, we can better appreciate the approach the Academy Museum has now adopted, as expressed in their press materials for their opening “Stories of Cinema” exhibit: “With the conviction that there is no single narrative encompassing the development of cinema, this exhibition will showcase multiple stories about moviemaking from a variety of voices and perspectives.” At the same time, Art museums all over the world have abandoned their art historical narratives in favor of showing more of the collection more of the time in a series of changing galleries that present a more diverse and inclusive history of creative artistry. The awakenings of the last few years that have convulsed the Academy and its membership from #OscarsSoWhite to #MeToo, have made plain the overdue realization that people want to see themselves represented on screen. Apparently, I was not alone in thinking so. Although, this sounded worthy, I wondered (to myself) whether anyone would actually show up for this iteration. In its earlier conception, the museum was envisioned as a chronological journey through the magic of moviemaking from magic lanterns and zoetropes, to Melies’ man-in-the moon early animation, through the Silent era, the Studio era into our own, with a series of temporary exhibits that highlighted the contributions of diverse members of the Academy. Photo by Joshua White/JW Pictures, ©Academy Museum Foundation ![]() 1904, Germany, from the Richard Balzer Collection, gift of Patricia Bellinger Balzer. and cotton string with print on paper strips, c. Steam-Driven Praxinoscope with Animation Strips, Ernst Plank, Wood, tin, brass, paint, glass mirror. ![]()
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