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Academy Film Archive Lays Off Multiple Staff Members in Restructuring as Museum Announces Expansions to Collection

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences laid off a major contingent of staff members in its archive and library on Wednesday, including Academy Film Archive director of 24 years Mike Pogorzelski. A source with knowledge of the layoffs says that several impacted employees had worked at the archive for more than a decade. The changes, announced on Wednesday by Academy CEO Bill Kramer in an internal statement obtained by Variety, come as part of an ongoing restructuring initiative at the organization. The move places the archive, the library and the collecting unit’s operations under a newly formed Academy Collection and Preservation department.

“As part of this work in building the new Academy Collection and Preservation department, some team members will be leaving the Academy this week. All impacted employees have been alerted to these changes — and while this affects less than 2% of our overall workforce, we know that having to say goodbye to colleagues is incredibly hard,” Kramer wrote. “We are deeply committed to providing support for those leaving and are finalizing a new reporting structure that we will share soon.”

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The cutbacks come as the Academy announced a slew of new acquisitions, expanding its collection of some 52 million items. The organization issued a press release Thursday, touting pieces such as Quentin Tarantino’s original handwritten script draft of “Pulp Fiction,” the tearaway dress worn by Jamie Lee Curtis in James Cameron’s “True Lies” and more than 80 artworks by Hayao Miyazaki and Nobura Yoshida.

The Academy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wednesday’s layoffs to the archive and library staff impacted roughly 2% of total Academy staff. Since Bill Kramer was tapped to be the organization’s CEO in 2022, the Academy has seen a series of structural changes across many departments, including the promotion of Amy Homma to oversee the museum and the expansion of oversight for Matt Severson, once the head of library operations, who is now overseeing collections, archiving and select elements of the Academy Museum.

The Academy Film Archive is one of the most robust collections of movies in the world, and a leader in the field of preservation. The Academy Library, known as the Margaret Herrick Library, is one of the world’s leading film history resources for research.

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