Academy Museum of Motion Pictures names new president, director

The board of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Wednesday announced the appointment of Jacqueline Stewart as the institution’s director and president.

Stewart, one of the world’s leading scholars, curators and public educators on cinema, was appointed in 2020 as chief artistic and programming officer of the museum. She assumes her duties as director and president on July 18 and will guide the vision of the Academy Museum and oversee all aspects of its operations, officials said.

Stewart succeeds Bill Kramer, who was appointed CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last week.

“The Board warmly and unanimously agrees that Jacqueline Stewart is the ideal choice to lead the Academy Museum into the future,” Ted Sarandos, chair of the museum’s board of trustees and co-CEO of Netflix, said in a statement.

“A strong and inspiring partner to Bill Kramer throughout the period leading up to our opening, she gave indispensable direction to the curatorial program that has been so widely admired. Her assumption of the role of director and president is a testament to both the intellectual heft of the Academy Museum and its institutional strength,” the statement continued.

A passionate film archivist and advocate for film preservation, Stewart is chair of the National Film Preservation Board, where she led the drafting of reports on diversity, equity and inclusion on the National Film Registry and in the film archival profession.

Honored in 2021 as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, she was a 2019 senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

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