Mac Rating: 0.00 | Votes: | Date: 03/06/2026 00:44:00

Cinema finally got a museum to match its home town when the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened on Wilshire Boulevard in September 2021. Operated by the organisation behind the Oscars, it is the largest institution in the United States devoted to the art, craft and history of moviemaking, drawing on a collection numbering in the tens of millions of objects, from props and costumes to posters, scripts and equipment. The building itself is part of the attraction. Architect Renzo Piano joined a restored 1939 department store, a Streamline Moderne landmark now called the Saban Building, to a new sphere of glass and concrete, its rooftop crowned by the glass-domed Dolby Family Terrace that looks out toward the Hollywood Hills. Inside, galleries trace the technical and cultural story of film, while rotating exhibitions have spotlighted directors, genres and figures often left out of standard accounts of the industry. Two theatres anchor the screening programme. The David Geffen Theater, built into the sphere, seats 945 and can project formats ranging from nitrate and 35mm to 70mm with Dolby sound, while the smaller Ted Mann Theater handles the bulk of everyday showings. Permanent highlights have included one of the surviving Bruce shark models from Jaws and a pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, while a major retrospective on the animator Hayao Miyazaki helped launch the galleries. The museum was a long time coming, first proposed decades earlier and delayed repeatedly before the pandemic pushed its debut back further still; it opened, fittingly, with a screening of The Wizard of Oz. The project ran well over its original budget and drew criticism during planning, but it has settled into a fixture of the Miracle Mile beside the tar pits and the county art museum, and admission to the galleries is sold separately from tickets to the theatre screenings. A rooftop terrace and skybridges link the two structures, opening up one of the better elevated views of the surrounding district, and timed-entry tickets are usually needed at busy periods.