Jacqueline Stewart, director and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is driven by purpose

Although the 96th Academy Awards, which honored Hollywood’s best and brightest, took place last Sunday, March 10, Film Academy Museum celebrates film and the artistic pursuit of filmmaking all yr round. With unique programming similar to a tribute to Midnight Movies, a live commentary presentation of John Waters’ first two movies, a conversation on climate change and activism with Jane Fonda, an Earth Day program featuring Arctic indigenous movies; a retrospective series about Korean actor Youn Yuh-jung in person; and more, the museum goals to coach and encourage film enthusiasts in Los Angeles and beyond. This diverse program is spearheaded by Jacqueline Stewart, who will turn out to be the institution’s director and president in 2022.

Stewart is a scientist, educator, programmer, creator, film archivist and host of “Silent Sunday Nights” on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Before becoming director and president of the Academy Museum, Stewart served as the museum’s artistic and program director. She also chairs the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB), where she led reporting on diversity, equity and inclusion in the National Film Registry and the film archivist career. She has served on the boards of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), and the Chicago Film Archives.

In 2015, Stewart co-curated a five-disc set for Kino Lorber. She is the creator and co-editor of, amongst others,

Stewart is the recipient of quite a few awards and honors, including the 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2023 AMIA Silver Light Award, the PAM CUT 2023 Cinema Unbound “Groundbreaker” Award from the Portland Art Museum, and the 2024 SCMS Distinguished Career Achievement Award. In 2018, she was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Stewart received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.

Simply put, she is well qualified for her role and underscores the museum’s commitment to excellence in film. As a movie enthusiast (she loves the cult film Julie Dash), in her role she strives to coach, encourage and uplift diverse communities by connecting them with the beauty of filmmaking. Stewart once said: “Our ambition in opening the Academy Museum was to supply Los Angeles and the world with an unprecedented institution for understanding and appreciating the history and culture of cinema, in all its artistic glory and power to influence and reflect society. I’m deeply honored to have been chosen for this latest position and sit up for working with our Board of Directors, our Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Brendan Connell Jr., our splendidly talented staff, and Bill Kramer and the Academy as we proceed Our cooperation will speed up our mission.”

Following the buzz surrounding the 2024 Academy Awards and the seventeenth annual Black Women In Hollywood Awards (held this yr at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures), we spoke with Stewart about the work she’s doing at the iconic institution, what inspires her, and her upcoming goals.

BEING: What makes you enthusiastic about your role?

Jacqueline Stewart: I’m at all times most excited after I see young people coming into the museum. We offer free tours, especially to Los Angeles public school students, and provide transportation for them to come back and see our exhibitions. Our museum is free to anyone over 17 and at all times can be.

I’m most excited after I see young people viewing our exhibitions and coming to our screenings because we show movies almost every night of the week. We have a Teen Council of young individuals who advise us on what types of programs we must always create to draw their peers. So this role is about providing young students with stories and information they can not get anywhere else. We hope, of course, that some of them will turn out to be filmmakers or find ways to reflect on the importance of their very own stories and find ways to inform their very own stories.

It’s powerful. How does it feel to be a black woman in your position in the film industry?

It really matters. I actually have at all times had an awesome sense of responsibility for every thing I do. I never feel like I’m entering a task or room alone. Sometimes you’re feeling rather a lot of pressure, however it’s not only pressure; there is also great power in it. I don’t need to digress on the work we have done around Hattie McDaniel and her historic Oscar for taking part in Mammy in , however it’s related to your query. Because, as you already know, our Oscar History Gallery highlights the Oscars over the years in lots of areas. We had to acknowledge Hattie McDaniel, despite the fact that her real Oscar had been missing for a few years. So now we have an empty box where her Oscar can be if we had it, because we wanted to point out the importance of her victory. It also makes visitors stop and take into consideration… Well, we made a vital curatorial decision that made people take into consideration her experiences in Hollywood during the era of classic Hollywood cinema. We can do extraordinary work to right some of the wrongs of the past.

Thank you for sharing this. This is an ideal segue into my next query: Can you speak about how you might be increasing the Black presence in the museum in terms of storytelling?

We now have an exhibition dedicated to the work of John Singleton. We proceed to contemplate easy methods to incorporate Black stories into our temporary exhibitions. And that is what we do in the galleries and through our programs. Of course, we had a solid Black History Month program. But we also at all times take into consideration combining a have a look at the history of black cinema with one other history of cinema. The same thing happens in our instructional programs and then in our film screenings.

Let’s enter the state of Black Hollywood. What do you’re thinking that is the state of Black Hollywood today?

Thank you for this query. I mean, there have been baby steps. If you have a look at history, there are moments where it looks like there is rather a lot more progress and opportunity, and then it goes backwards, comes up again, and goes down again. But these waves that ebb and flow appear to be getting smaller and smaller. It was amazing to see the wealth of black talent, actors, writers and directors at the awards show throughout the awards season; the work that folks you already know do is impressive. It’s more solid than it has been in a really very long time. I believe the murder of George Floyd and the opening of space for more black voices has now reached a form of critical mass. At least in our community, there is a really strong sense of urgency and reluctance to shut the doors again, just as there is an actual sense of reluctance to return.

So let’s move on to the topic of Black Women in Hollywood. It was an epic day! How was it working with us?

We were honored that the ESSENCE team asked us to designate a location for this to occur, and we wanted the museum to be the space and backdrop for this incredible event. I do know I worked in that room because I wanted people to come back back and engage with our program at the museum. So it meant rather a lot to me to introduce the museum to this amazing community. However, knowing that ESSENCE is a legacy and media empire with a worldwide reach, those that didn’t participate would see that it was greater than only a community gathered together; it was like meeting again. And knowing that the Academy Museum is an area where this type of Black family reunion can happen is of great importance.

What’s next?

As you already know, the 96th Academy Awards were just handed out, which implies that 2028 can be the one centesimal Oscar. That’s why I believe rather a lot about how we’ll have fun this vital anniversary; The Academy will have fun its one centesimal anniversary in 2027. So, pondering rather a lot about 2027 and 2028, what do we wish to say about the first 100 years of the Academy and how can we begin to conceptualize what the next 100 years of the Academy will appear like as. This is an enormous project that I’m currently implementing with my teams.

In terms of personal goals, I actually have been in Los Angeles for nearly 4 years and need to get to know the city higher. An awesome example was lunch at ESSENCE; many dynamic female artists engage on this work. I do know rather a lot of them professionally, but I’m hoping to deepen and expand some of my relationships with people who find themselves on this city and get to know them as a woman from the south side of Chicago; There are many places in Los Angeles and Southern California that I’m looking forward to exploring.