City of Angels and Angles today only had to walk up the street from our Miracle Mile office to take a peek at the blown-out setting for what looks like a future blockbuster. Naturally, this being L.A., I drove.
Sorry, Mr. Bay, it’s not your back lot version of America 2125. This site belongs to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , and while it’s clearly not ready for its Hollywood close-up yet, the future Academy Museum promises to be a game changer when it debuts.
Game changer in both good and potentially bad ways.
Not only will it up the glitz/glamour quotient of the area, but it will change the game for traffic in and around the middle of already overcrowded Wilshire Blvd. Such is the price to pay for bringing yet another world class showcase to the Museum Square area, joining LACMA’s redesigned future campus and the red-clad Petersen, Automotive Museum, which revs its engines right across the street.
Here’s what the front looks like now, the gold façade still familiar to longtime Los Angeles residents as the former May Company Department Store. If you’re not quite that old you still might remember the building as the place that had the King Tut exhibition over a decade ago.
That cool deco front façade is sure to change into something spectacular, but nothing will match the impact of the giant glass bubble that will eventually replace the growing rubble pile on the other side of the enormous structure. Surely this futuristic fish bowl as theatre entertainment venue will displace the floating rock at LACMA as the most popular sort-of-circular tourist destination in town. The balls at MacArthur Park lake held that title in the fall but they are gone now.
Continue reading Michael Bay Apocalyptic Film Set or Future Academy Museum?
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