The Academy Museum Is Making Money and Luring a Younger-Than-Expected Audience

New director Jacqueline Stewart and COO Brendan Connell Jr. discuss financial successes and talk how they are addressing the uproar over lack of Jewish representation at the 1-year-old museum.

The Academy Museum Is Making Money and Luring a Younger-Than-Expected Audience

Jacqueline Stewart and Brendan Connell Jr. on the Academy Museum’s Dolby Family Terrace. RICHARD HARBAUGH/© ACADEMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION

After decades of false starts and years of delays for construction and the pandemic, the $484 million, Renzo Piano-designed Academy Museum finally opened to the public in September 2021. Since then, the museum has exceeded expectations by drawing 700,000 visitors (20 percent more than its goal), and it is easily covering its operating expenses via a mix of ticket sales, memberships (24,000 sold to date), a successful gift shop (which has done more than $6 million in sales), renting the space for events and its annual gala, which takes place Oct. 15 and honors Julia Roberts, Steve McQueen, Miky Lee and Tilda Swinton.

On the occasion of the museum’s one-year anniversary, THR spoke with Academy Museum director Jacqueline Stewart (who ascended to the position in July after serving as its head artistic and programming officer) and chief operating officer Brendan Connell Jr. about the institution’s surprising visitor demographics, their response to the critique that the museum lacks Jewish representation and how their goal to lure the “film-curious” inside their doors is working out.

Did this year feel like a marathon or a sprint?

JACQUELINE STEWART I would say that we’ve been running a marathon at sprint pace. We have a clip in the gallery of that closing moment in The Graduate. He disrupts the wedding, they get on the bus. Then there’s that hold on their faces, like, “And now what do we do?” It was kind of like that. We were so all-hands-on-deck. All of our energy was focused on opening this huge institution, and then it was like, “OK, and now we’re open seven days a week.”

BRENDAN CONNELL JR. We launched galleries, a cinematheque, a store, an event space, a publishing business.

How did attendance compare to your expectations?

STEWART Seven hundred thousand tickets opening year — it’s just phenomenal. That’s bearing in mind that we were not selling tickets at full capacity part of the year. We were doing half capacity in our theaters through the spring. We were doing timed ticketing in the galleries and really trying to be mindful of numbers so that people could socially distance. So it’s really a testament to the built-up excitement that people had for our opening.

The museum includes exhibition spaces in the former May Company building (right) and a glass sphere that houses the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater (left).Courtesy of IWAN BAAN

Were the people who showed up the people you were expecting to show up?

STEWART We were really pleased to see that half of the visitors who came to us in this first year were under the age of 40. If you look at comparable demographics from other museums, they skew older. It’s part of our mission to try to inspire the next generation of filmmakers. We want to educate the next generations of film viewers as well. So that statistic really means a lot to us.

CONNELL Also, a lot of our visitors were from the greater Los Angeles area. In a COVID environment, we were a place to visit when people were a little bit hesitant to fly anywhere. We’re hoping now, as COVID slowly eases up a little bit, that we get even more international visitors.

Which galleries are attracting whom?

STEWART We opened with the blockbuster Hayao Miyazaki exhibition, and so folks who were clearly die-hard Miyazaki fans came from all over to see that exhibition. I’d say the Spike Lee Gallery is always full when I’m walking through the museum. He is someone who attracts such attention in terms of the distinctive style of his work but also his social and political voice. It’s been important to us that we do programs that start to build this sense of being a local resource for film lovers, for people who are film-curious. The flagship [screening] series that we launched, Oscar Sundays, and our Branch Selects [programmed in concert with members of the Academy’s branches] have been doing very well with audiences.

Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971 running through April 9, 2023 includes a gallery spotlighting race films, which were independent productions in the 1910s to the ’40s featuring all-Black casts and designed for Black audiences. — Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971 (running through April 9, 2023) includes a gallery spotlighting race films, which were independent productions in the 1910s to the ’40s featuring all-Black casts and designed for Black audiences.Courtesy of JOSHUA WHITE, JW PICTURES/ © ACADEMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION.

How is the museum doing financially?

STEWART The Hayao Miyazaki exhibition far exceeded our expectations, and that wasn’t just in terms of attracting people into the gallery, but our retail product related to Miyazaki was a spectacular success. Our catalog went to a fourth printing. You have seen that there have been many premieres at the Academy Museum. So our function as a rental space also exceeded our initial projections. We really want to lean into that because we have a gorgeous building.

I know what’s considered a successful box office opening for a film, but I’m not sure I know what’s considered a successful opening for a museum.

STEWART We have benchmarks that we’re trying to meet on a regular basis. It’s been important for us also to think about how it is that we can reach people who can’t necessarily afford tickets to our museum. We offer free admission for anyone under the age of 17, free admission to California residents with EBT cards. Every week, we’re looking at our ticket numbers, just like one does for opening films. Sometimes, when talking to our colleagues in the industry, we try to point out the ways that opening a museum is not like opening a film, in the sense that it’s not a finished product. We’ve opened an institution that is going to be a citizen of Los Angeles in perpetuity. That’s the goal.

Can you share feedback that you’ve heard and responded to?

STEWART The most visible note that we got had to do with Jewish representation in the museum the first year, and we heard that loud and clear. Since before opening, we’ve been planning our Vienna in Hollywood Symposium, this international symposium that had at its core a look at emigré filmmakers, many of them Jewish, who had a major hand in shaping the classical Hollywood cinema as a business and as an art form. But we also recognize that it’s incredibly important for this museum in Los Angeles to explain to visitors why it is that the industry ended up located in this city. So we’re developing our Hollywoodland exhibition that traces the origins of the studios and the Jewish founders of the Hollywood studios, and that will be a permanent exhibition.

CONNELL We’re also responding to our visitors on a day-to-day basis. Jacqueline and I spent a lot of time out on the museum floor seeing how people actually use the museum.

STEWART That’s one of the ways that we recognized that our vitrines [i.e., display cases] could be positioned better for visitors who are in wheelchairs and made modifications to them.

A costume worn by Sammy Davis Jr. in Porgy & Bess (1959), part of the new exhibit Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.Courtesy of JOSHUA WHITE, JW PICTURES/ © ACADEMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION.

Before you opened, there were some people speculating that the museum would be too tacky rah-rah Hollywood, and then there were other people saying, “Oh, it’s going to be too cerebral and scholarly.” How have you found a balance that you’re happy with?

STEWART I’m constantly hearing how pleasantly surprised people are by the seriousness of our content. I hope that that inspires more art museums to have film-related content. There are so many ways that film interacts with other art traditions. The key to our success there is that we offer layered experiences. I mean, I met a guy who told me it was his 83rd visit to the museum.

Was that guy’s name Martin Scorsese?

STEWART Not unless he was in disguise. Sometimes [industry visitors] tell us when they’re passing through, sometimes they don’t.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.