The New Season in Art: The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures premieres

In Hollywood there's always a new "It" girl, and this fall it may just be the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The museum, designed by architect Renzo Piano, cost $482 million, and is already turning heads even before the doors open on September 30.

Correspondent Serena Altschul asked, "Are you ready to open?"

"Oh, man, I'm so ready!" laughed Bill Kramer, the museum's president and director. "I am so ready to open this museum!

"The Academy has 13 million items in our collection: scripts, photographs, costumes, props, storyboards, personal collections. We are drawing from that collection, but we're also securing loans from collectors, [like] Steven Spielberg loaning us Rosebud. It doesn't get better than that."

The museum is filled with artifacts, from the familiar (like Dorothy's ruby slippers and ET), to less-recognizable pieces (like the typewriter used to write Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"). 

Fittingly, the building also has two theaters which will show movies daily.

It's a museum that seems like a perfect fit for Los Angeles, but it's one that waited nearly a century for its closeup. 

"The Academy was founded in 1927," Kramer said, "and in 1929, at a board meeting, the founders of the Academy stated that they needed to build a film museum."

"And yet, it almost took a century!" said Altschul. 

"It almost took a century! This iteration launched in 2011. It's diverse, it's inclusive, it's equitable, but it represents film history, I think, in a truer, more accurate way."

• Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles | Exhibits | Screening schedule

But this museum isn't the only coming attraction this fall. There's plenty of art to see all around the country.

Jasper Johns, for example, will be the subject of an unprecedented show taking place simultaneously at both the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

• "Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror," at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Sept. 29, 2021-Feb. 13, 2022).

Other noteworthy retrospectives include a Judy Chicago exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and Barbara Kruger at the Art Institute of Chicago.

• "Judy Chicago: A Retrospective," at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (through January 9, 2022)
• "Barbara Kruger: Thinking Of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You," at the Art Institute of Chicago (Sept. 19, 2021-Jan. 24, 2022)

Back on the East Coast, the Brooklyn Museum of Art is dressed to the nines with a Christian Dior exhibit. 

• "Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams," at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, N.Y. (though Feb. 20, 2022)

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston stays cozy with some unique American quilts.

• "Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Oct. 10-2021-Jan. 17, 2022)
  

We would also like to wish a Happy 10th Birthday to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, Arkansas, an anniversary giving us all yet another reason to celebrate a return to museums this fall.

• "Crystal Bridges at 10," at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. (though Sept. 27, 2021)

More fall art exhibitions:

• "Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America," at the Cincinnati Art Museum (through October 3)
• "Monet at Étretat," at the Seattle Art Museum (through October 17)

• "The Obama Portraits Tour" – Paintings of the former president and first lady by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald – is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum (through Oct. 24), before traveling to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Nov. 7, 2021-Jan. 2, 2022), the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (Jan. 14, 2022-March 13, 2022); and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (March 27, 2022-May 30, 2022)
• "Joan Mitchell," at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (through Jan. 17, 2022)
• "Oliver Lee Jackson," at the Saint Louis Museum of Art (through February 20, 2022)
• "Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon," at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Sept. 19, 2021-Jan. 23, 2022)

• "The Polonsky Exhibition of the New York Public Library's Treasures," at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street (opens September 24)
• "Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel," at the Barnes, Philadelphia (Sept. 26, 2021-Jan. 9, 2022) 
• "A Modern Influence: Henri Matisse, Etta Cone, and Baltimore," at the Baltimore Museum of Art (Oct. 3, 2021-Jan. 2, 2022)
• "Georgia O'Keefe, Photographer," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (October 17, 2021-Jan. 17, 2022)
• "Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings," at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Oct. 17, 2021-Feb. 27, 2022)

• "Afro-Atlantic Histories," an exhibit exploring the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Oct. 24, 2021-Jan. 17, 2022), before moving to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 2022
• "Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful," a retrospective at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (Oct. 30, 2021-Jan. 23, 2022)  
• "Calder-Picasso," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (October 31, 2021–January 30, 2022

     
Story produced by Julie Kracov and Sara Kugel. Editor: Remington Korper.