Generous Donations Extend Longtime Museum Film Program

Back in July, the LA Times reported that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will be pulling the plug on its 40-year-old weekend film program. The program screens cinema retrospectives on and features collections of foreign and arthouse films.

The program is said to have lost more than a million dollars over the last decade. Now it's being reported that two organizations have stepped forward to pledge a total of $150,000 to save the series.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., (who produces the Golden Globe Awards) and the Ovation network have each agreed to put up $75,000 toward the program, which had been scheduled to close in October. Additionally, Ovation has promised to spend $1.5 million to market the film program across their multiple media platforms, both locally and nationally.

With help from the donations, the program will now continue at least through the end of the fiscal year in June 2010 says a museum spokesperson. They added that the museum will continue to seek additional donors and patrons in support of the film program.

"[LACMA] is grateful to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Time Warner Cable, and Ovation TV, for expressing their tangible support for the art of film at LACMA, and we’re very pleased that we can keep film rolling while we build for the future." said LACMA Director Michael Govan in a statement.

The museum also announced that it intends to create a film department within its curatorial ranks that will be in charge of "thinking about the history and future of film as art as well as film's increasing importance in the larger narrative of art history."