The long-delayed temple to cinema will be unveiled today on Wilshire Boulevard.
A museum in Amsterdam is contemptuously known as the Bathtub because it resembles one. Berliners refer to their city’s architecturally adventurous arts center as the Pregnant Oyster. Unfortunate nicknames for a prominent museum in France include the Smurf House. And now Los Angeles has… the Death Star? The long-delayed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will finally open today on Wilshire Boulevard. It’s a seven-story, $484 million temple to cinema that mixes cerebral (a lavish Hayao Miyazaki retrospective) with showbiz (a high-tech simulation of what it feels like to accept an Oscar). Adult tickets cost $25. The Oscars Experience is $15 extra. Entry-time reservations are required. If nothing else, Angelenos now have somewhere to take Hollywood-fascinated visitors that does not involve the dreaded Hollywood & Highland shopping mall or the sticky, stinky Walk of Fame. Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who designed the Academy Museum, has one plea, however. It involves a nickname for the complex, which includes a 26-million-pound concrete-and-glass spherical building. In the eyes of many beholders, the globe resembles Darth Vader’s planet-destroying space station from “Star Wars.
