- Rendering of new Oscars Museum, looking south on Fairfax at 6th Street. Courtesy of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
By 2016 the historic May Company Building at Wilshire and Fairfax may not look that different from the boulevard, but step around the back and they’ll be quite a surprise. A giant orb will have attached itself to the rear profile of the future museum of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, thanks to the vision of architects Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali.
The Piano-Pali plans are to preserve and restore the street-front facades of the 1938 Streamline Moderne building and fill it with modern exhibition and gallery space, screening rooms and an interactive education center with demonstration labs. It promises to be a much more vibrant facility, filling out and utilizing all 300,000 square feet of space that is currently underutilized by LACMA. One hundred million dollars of the $250million capital campaign has already been raised for the Academy Museum.
“A major movie museum in the heart of this city has been a long-held dream of the Academy,” said Academy President Hawk Koch in a statement. “Thanks to the latest technological developments we can take the visiting public through time, back into our history and forward toward our future.”
Oscars.org: The Academy Unveils Vision for New Museum
