Get up close and personal with Hollywood history at the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
As a city, Los Angeles has been defined in large part by the movie industry, which has been anchored here for more than a century telling stories of romance, adventure, comedy, horror and beyond through films. But there has never been a place in the city where the story of the film industry itself, its cinematic history and impact on the world was told in one place, until the completion of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which opens Sept.30. “It matters for Los Angeles to have this film museum,” said actor Tom Hanks, as he spoke to a crowd during a media preview event a few days before the public opening. “We all know films are made everywhere in the world, and they are wonderful films and there are other cities with film museums. But with all due respect, a place like Los Angeles, created by the Motion Picture Academy, this museum has really got to be the Parthenon of such places. Do we need a movie museum? Yeah, because we need to celebrate everything that this town has brought to the world and everything the art form has brought to the world in order to bring people together,” said Hanks, who sits on the museum’s board of trustees, as he spoke from the venue’s 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater. The seven-story,300,000-square-foot-museum opens to the public is located on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax, adjacent to LACMA and across the street from the Petersen Automotive Museum on Miracle Mile. The museum is housed in two buildings: the former May Company Building, which was designated a Historic-Cultural Monument in 1992, now renamed the Saban Building; and a new structure connected by two glass bridges and defined by a glass dome dubbed the Sphere Building, which houses the 1,000-seat Geffen Theater.
