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Academy Museum Donors: What About the Jews?

The private grumbling has begun to spill into the press, and it’s certainly a topic of frustration among some older, Jewish members I’ve spoken to. Now a few of those angry members are withholding financial donations in protest.

Cecil B DeMille, Adolph Zukor And Sam Goldwyn
Photo via John Kobal Fdn/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
November 22, 2021

Among the gripes about L.A.’s new Academy Museum is the pretty noticeable downplaying of the movie industry’s founding fathers—the “moguls,” the mostly Eastern European Jews who are the reason “Hollywood” is located in Los Angeles in the first place. Visitors are treated to lavish displays on Spike Lee, Hayao Miyazaki and Pedro Almodovar, but see much more muted (and far less flattering) mentions of transformational figures like Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor, or the Warner brothers, not to mention the stars of the so-called Golden Age.