Dear Fellow Academy Member,
It’s been a while since we sent you our first of these occasional newsletters. That initial mailing described our ambition to create a long overdue addition to the Academy and the city – a museum devoted to motion pictures. This edition focuses on a few very important decisions that we’ve made in support of that vision – in particular, the selection of an architect.
We set out to find an architect that could take our particular needs, crafts and legacy, and translate it all into a highly functional, impressive design – but not an intimidating one. We needed an architect that could take our vision and design toward, around and even beyond it.
We invited 32 architects from 11 countries to submit their qualifications. In the end, our search took us halfway around the globe to meet with five of these architects and view some of their built work.
We needed to see, first hand, that they could deliver a design of the requisite quality and scope. We found ourselves in London, Paris, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Berlin, Oslo, Denver, Oklahoma City and a few other cities. While that may sound like an adventure, this was no vacation – it was a mission. We flew every evening and went to bed, got up first thing in the morning to spend the day with the architect, visited his or her office and buildings, then headed back to the airport to start the cycle again.
The process was tiring but thrilling. The building tours provided a much better sense of the firm’s aesthetics than any photograph ever could. And we saw everything, including the spaces that don’t often make it into coffee table books – the kitchens, green rooms, boiler rooms, loading docks, security offices, and collection storage spaces, to name a few. And as the visits continued, we became certain that we had the right list of finalists. All of the firms we met with were exciting and talented and could do the job – and do it well.
There is no doubt that this museum will be a source of great pride to the Academy, a tribute to the worldwide art of cinema, and a treasure to the Hollywood and greater Los Angeles communities. This has been an exhilarating period in the development process of our museum, and it’s only going to become more exciting. I look forward to sharing more project milestones with you as we reach them.
Sid Ganis
