Jacqueline Stewart, the noted film scholar and Turner Classic Movies host, has been appointed director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the museum’s board of trustees announced Wednesday.
Since 2020, Stewart has served as the museum’s chief artistic and programming officer, leading strategy and planning for the Academy Museum’s curatorial, educational and public programming initiatives, including exhibitions, screenings, symposia, publications, workshops, youth programs and the Academy Museum Podcast.
In her new roles, which she will assume on July 18, she will be responsible for guiding the vision and overseeing all aspects of the operations of the institution, which opened to the public last September.
The only prior director and president of the museum was Bill Kramer, who became CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last week.
“It has been a great privilege to work hand-in-hand with Jacqueline as we opened the Academy Museum,” Kramer said in a statement. “I am thrilled that we will continue to collaborate in our two new roles. I know the museum will thrive thanks to her rare combination of expertise, creativity and proven leadership. Like movie fans everywhere, I am so thankful to have her guide the future of the Academy Museum.”
Added Ted Sarandos, the chair of the museum’s board of trustees and co-CEO of Netflix, “The board warmly and unanimously agrees that Jacqueline Stewart is the ideal choice to lead the Academy Museum into the future. 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.”
Stewart, for her part, said, “Our ambition in opening the Academy Museum was to give Los Angeles and the world an unprecedented institution for understanding and appreciating the history and culture of cinema, in all its artistic glory and all its power to influence and reflect society. I feel deeply honored to have been chosen for this new role and look forward to working with our board of trustees, our COO and general counsel Brendan Connell Jr., our wonderfully talented staff and with Bill Kramer and the Academy, as we continue to advance our mission.”
A native of Chicago’s South Side, Stewart earned her B.A. in English from Stanford University and her PhD in English from the University of Chicago, and also studied moving image archiving at UCLA and the Cineteca di Bologna in Italy.
She holds an appointment as Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, having previously served on the faculty of Northwestern University. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018, was a 2019 senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and was honored in 2021 as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Stewart was widely celebrated for her 2005 book Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, a study of African Americans and silent cinema, and her co-editorship of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema and William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission.
She currently hosts “Silent Sunday Nights” on TCM and serves as chair of the National Film Preservation Board.