#OscarsSoWhite, which began as a tweet by media consultant April Reign in 2015, after the Academy-at the time about 92 percent white and 75 percent male-awarded all 20 acting nominations that year to white actors, speaks to just how systemic the problem is. But the Academy is also an organization under fire, its flagship awards ceremony dwindling in ratings and relevance alongside long-brewing reckonings over diversity, inclusion and representation. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, first created in 1927 by 36 industry leaders ostensibly as an organization to benefit the film industry but in practice to squash union efforts, is today nearly 10,000 members strong and dedicated to the cooperation and advancement of the motion-picture business. It was never a given how the industry’s biggest establishment player would curate a space intended to capture the spirit of movie-making. Iwan Baan/©Iwan Baan Studios, Courtesy Academy Museum Foundation The visually-striking institution opens its doors on a stretch of Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard. But the question that loomed before its opening was not about its collection (of which it boasts the largest of its kind in the world), but whether it could really live up to its promise to be a definitive home to the art and science of movies. Visually striking with not one, but two movie theaters (the seats of which will not disappoint), the seven-story museum is full of treasures from the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane donated by Steven Spielberg to “Bruce,” the only surviving full-size shark model cast from the original mold used on Jaws. The state-of-the-art institution at long last opens its doors on a stretch of Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard. Years behind schedule, the 300,000-square-foot complex designed by the Pritzker prize-winning architect Renzo Piano had, as the joke goes, spent longer in development than Cleopatra. I was worried that the long-awaited, $482 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures would break my heart.
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