Hollywood's Jewish Founders: How the Academy Museum Got It So Wrong, Twice

IN THE LAST MONTH, the culture wars raging around antisemitism have come home to roost at Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and its new museum on Wilshire Boulevard. After the museum initially failed to recognize the Jewish founders of the industry in 2021, this year the exhibit aimed at righting this lapse managed to insult and offend instead of making amends. TheWrap, which broke this story in early June, looked deeply at the reasons why the Academy managed to get it wrong, twice, and what it says about the heightened sensitivity of this cultural moment.

After more than a decade of missteps and misfires, the magnificent, $480 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened, finally, in 2021. After one building, and then another. After design battles among the architects. After the hiring and the replacement of a museum director. After fundraising stalled out and had to be started and then started again. And after delays and delays and more delays.

When the doors finally opened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed that all the struggles could finally be put in the past. Judy Garland's ruby slippers were there, along with the mechanical shark from "Jaws" and the Rosebud sled from "Citizen Kane."

But what really stuck out to early visitors was the politically "woke" tone of the museum, drawing attention to Hollywood's past failings toward Black, indigenous, LGBTQ groups and women, in a way that some found salutary and others heavy-handed. An homage to "Real Women Have Curves," the 2002 film about a Mexican American family in East LA, won a prominent place, as did a gallery on the films of Spike Lee.

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