Inclusion won’t be visible only on the gallery walls. Joshua White / © Academy Museum Foundation The renovated space, perched in front of Renzo Piano’s Sphere Building, is set to open this December. “We’re going to tell a lot of difficult, dishonorable, and uncomfortable stories,” says museum director Bill Kramer, “including ones about the #MeToo movement, #OscarsSoWhite, prejudicial casting choices, and lack of representation-that will all be in there.” It’s also part of a plan to examine film history, warts and all. To be honored in this way is astonishing.” “I’m a girl from this tiny Puerto Rican town, but look at where I am today. “I felt like an outlier, and I didn’t get treated as sweetly as I might have by this business in my younger days,” Moreno says. The pillars are a touching tribute, but they also show the museum’s commitment to visibility for people previously written out of Hollywood history. The day had the buzzy, breezy feel of a family reunion-albeit for a remarkably accomplished clan-but when the two women went to the top floor to visit their tributes, the frisson gave way to reverent quiet, punctuated occasionally by sighs and sniffles. Richard Harbaugh/© Academy Museum Foundationĭuring a Town & Country photo shoot at the yet-to-be-completed museum, Loren and Moreno (who had, surprisingly, never met) visited their pillars together. Sophia Loren’s first visit to her honorary pillar. They’re the backbone of this art form, and they deserve to be honored.” There wouldn’t be a Regina Scully, a Lyn Lear, or a Laura Dern without them, and there wouldn’t be that next generation who have the luxury to be doing what they are. ![]() For this museum to be honoring the legacy of these women is so important. “There are so many women who have worked on the same films, and now we’re working on this project together. “I call it a sacred circle,” Scully says. Of all the big ticket ways the entertainment world has gotten behind the museum, however, the pillar campaign may be the most affecting. To date the project has raised 97 percent of the $388 million it was aiming for from donors around the world. It features the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater, the Barbra Streisand Bridge, the Spielberg Family Gallery, and the Steve Tisch Terrace, to name a few. The museum offers plenty of opportunities for philanthropists. Then, when I realized it was true, it made my heart beat stronger.” ![]() “I’m from Naples, so I never believe when people tell me good news. “When they asked me to be honored, I didn’t believe it,” Loren says. The Marriage Italian Style star is one of six trailblazing women in the film industry (the others are Rita Moreno, Alice Guy-Blaché, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Miyoshi Umeki, and Hattie McDaniel) being honored by the museum with fifth-floor pillars named in their honor, part of a campaign that offered naming rights for the Saban Building’s 55 structural columns for $1 million each. Loren, who made history in 1962 as the first actor to win an Academy Award for a foreign language role, is more than just bait-she’s literally part of the building. ![]() The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’s Sphere Building, designed by Renzo Piano. It’s the most beautiful, symbolic photo, and he turned around and said, ‘I’m going to do this project.’ ” “The way Dawn enticed him was that she brought him this gorgeous photo of a young Sophia Loren leaning up against a pillar with her eyes closed. Scully, a film producer and museum trustee. “Renzo has so many projects going on and very little time,” says Regina K. At least, that was the case in 2012, when Dawn Hudson, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, asked Italian architect Renzo Piano to design the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a project that is planning to open its doors in April of 2021-when it will unveil 300,000 square feet of galleries, screening rooms, and assorted displays of movie magic in an overhauled former May Company building (now named the Saban Building) on Los Angeles’s Miracle Mile. īuilding a museum requires an army of workers, millions in funding, and nerves of steel-and it helps if you have Sophia Loren. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit. The museum, which kicked off its opening with a star-studded gala -hosted inaugural exhibitions including galleries devoted to the work of Spike Lee, Pedro Almodóvar, and Miyazaki Hayao, as well as cinematic treasures ranging from the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz and the shark (his name is Bruce) from Jaws. On September 30, 2021-nearly 18 months after this story was completed-the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures finally opened to the public.
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