The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be designed by the French architecture firm Atelier Christian de Portzamparc.
De Portzamparc, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1994, designed the Cité de la Musique and the Café Beaubourg in Paris, and the French Embassy building in Berlin. In the United States, he designed the LVMH Tower (Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton headquarters) in New York City.
Architect Selection Subcommittee chair Jeannine Oppewall was quoted as saying that "in part, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will demonstrate how film both reflects and shapes world culture, not just American culture. So we researched and interviewed leading architects from all over the world to see who could best express the Academy's vision of the museum. Ultimately, it was de Portzamparc who seemed the most in tune with that vision, and we know he and his team will have an exciting, creative approach to bringing it to fruition."
The Academy wants the Museum of Motion Pictures to be located next to the its Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study at Vine Street and Fountain Avenue in Hollywood. A planned museum campus will span nearly eight acres.
Work on the project is slated to begin in 2009.
Photo: AFP/Jean-Pierre Muller
Joseph Cornell Film Series at San Francisco's MoMA
Period Costumes for the Screen: From the Collection of Cosprop, London
Movies on the Mind: Psychology and Film Since Sigmund Freud
Morath: Photographic Learnings of THE MISFITS
The development of this museum will be watched closely in Hong Kong as there has long been a plan to have a museum of Hong Kong Cinema