Review: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: A Star Is Born

Last week, I wrote about the Nixon Library and Museum, the presidential site in Yorba Linda, Calif., exploring the triumphs and travails of the Golden State’s first native son in the Oval Office. Nixon was very much of California, coming from Orange County and incarnating the earnest, striving, practical character of suburbia. Granted, he was many things, but a matinee idol wasn’t one of them. A few miles down the road from Yorba Linda is Hollywood, very much of California, too, and dreams, gloss, and glitter. Hollywood, its own world, doesn’t exist exclusively to serve the other, the suburban mindset, though Hollywood is a commercial proposition. What it makes is an amalgam of the arts. Design, music, literature, and performance mesh, often to create cultural icons.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, opened in 2021, is the new museum of the history and craft of movies. It’s run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose annual Oscars infuriate, befuddle, mortify, and rivet. At a cost of $500 million, it was a bit cheaper than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That, in a way, set a low bar. The new museum could not possibly be as bad as that movie, so it was bound to look like value for money.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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Last week, I wrote about the Nixon Library and Museum, the presidential site in Yorba Linda, Calif., exploring the triumphs and travails of the Golden State’s first native son in the Oval Office. Nixon was very much of California, coming from Orange County and incarnating the earnest, striving, practical character of suburbia. Granted, he was many things, but a matinee idol wasn’t one of them. A few miles down the road from Yorba Linda is Hollywood, very much of California, too, and dreams, gloss, and glitter. Hollywood, its own world, doesn’t exist exclusively to serve the other, the suburban mindset, though Hollywood is a commercial proposition. What it makes is an amalgam of the arts. Design, music, literature, and performance mesh, often to create cultural icons.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, opened in 2021, is the new museum of the history and craft of movies. It’s run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose annual Oscars infuriate, befuddle, mortify, and rivet. At a cost of $500 million, it was a bit cheaper than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That, in a way, set a low bar. The new museum could not possibly be as bad as that movie, so it was bound to look like value for money.