It’s a question of priorities, and the 30 or so employees at the Academy Film Archive have been nervous for a while. They’ve seen where the energy is going ever since Bill Kramer moved over from the Academy Museum to run parent organization the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Under his purview is the non-profit 501C3 Academy Foundation, which runs the Museum, the archive, and the Margaret Herrick Library.
Kramer has been restructuring the Academy for some time now. For example, he recently merged the communications and marketing teams for all the sections of the Academy and saw the exit of a dozen-plus employees. The goal for the new Academy Collection and Preservation Department is to align operations and avoid duplicating efforts.
Getting lost in these layoffs are experienced people with vast institutional knowledge. They include Anne Coco, the archive’s veteran poster curator who built the graphic art department from scratch over decade, and Mike Pogorzelski, the head of the Film Archive.
Hard-working Matt Severson, who was promoted in May to executive vice president of Academy Collection and Preservation, now runs the Archive; he never replaced himself as the director of the Herrick Library. “The museum has been the big dog for years now,” said one former archive employee. “That’s a lot to put on one guy’s plate. They’re chopping the library off at the knees.”
“I find this news to be terribly discouraging,” said film historian Leonard Maltin. “Authors and researchers come from all over the world to utilize the Margaret Herrick Library, a unique resource. Reducing its hard-working staff is like cutting off its blood supply.”
Brianna Toth, video preservation specialist at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, noted the October 30 layoffs with alarm. “Yesterday 7 of the 30+ employees were laid off at the Academy Film Archive without notice,” she wrote on Twitter. “This included the Director & Head of Preservation who was one of the best managers I ever had.
“This feels like a death knell for the 3rd largest film archive in North America,” she continued. “Many of the people who were axed were pivotal in making the collections what they are today. None of them deserved this. The decision was ‘effective immediately’ and they had no time to pass on work or institutional knowledge. They were simply told to leave.”
A representative for the Academy had no comment.
Also gone with the wind were several senior archive curators, library staffers, the nitrate vault manager, and the head of cataloging.
As the tension between the Academy’s archive and library, and its museum grows, the Academy is clearly investing in its public-facing, revenue producing entity. The museum just announced snazzy new acquisitions to the Academy Collection, including drawings from Hayao Miyazaki, Quentin Tarantino’s original “Pulp Fiction” script, and the personal collections of Oliver Stone and Paul Verhoeven.
Trimming senior staff with high salaries is a standard corporate maneuver under new management. But is Kramer throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Making so many changes will effectively change the way the Archive and Library operate. Essential Hollywood history is stored and maintained in these vast archives and vaults. Will they depreciate in value?
