Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

The largest museum in the United States devoted to the art, science and artists of moviemaking gives film the scale it rarely gets outside a studio lot. Opened to the public on September 30, 2021, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is built around the Academy’s own collections: millions of photographs, hundreds of thousands of film and video assets, plus screenplays, posters and production art in the tens of thousands.

Its core is Stories of Cinema, a three-level permanent exhibition that traces film as an international, technological and social history. That matters because the displays are drawn from primary material rather than borrowed glamour: the archive becomes the thing you move through, not just a source of captions.

The building sharpens the experience. The restored 1939 May Company, now the Saban Building, keeps its Streamline Moderne façade, while Renzo Piano’s glass-and-concrete Sphere Building adds the David Geffen Theater. Inside, screenings can use nitrate, 35mm, 70mm or modern laser projection with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.