Motion picture museum is a lifetime achievement

We know the Twin Counties is an upstate New York mecca for filmmaking and television production, but for Hillsdale Town Supervisor Peter Cipkowski, the 92nd annual Academy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles was the Mount Everest of cinema.

Cipkowski was in the audience Sunday night to see Brad Pitt take home his first acting award and “Parasite” win for Best Picture, a first for a foreign-language film.

But Cipkowski was there for a different, more personal reason. Cipkowski and his husband Bill Kramer were there to hear actor Tom Hanks announce that the new Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, at 6067 Wilshire Blvd., will open on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus Dec. 14, with Kramer as its director. It wasn’t a gold statuette, but for Cipkowski and Kramer it was the biggest prize of the evening.

Kramer moved to Hillsdale five years ago from Los Angeles. He accepted the museum director job last fall and took the reins Jan. 1. Cipkowski will split his time between the City of Angels and Hillsdale while Kramer settles into his new role.

Kramer worked with Hanks over the weekend to prepare the launch announcement of the museum.

“Now there’s this large complex devoted to the art and study of motion pictures, and the history of motion pictures, that my husband is the director of,” the understandably proud Cipkowski said Monday.

A project years in the making, Kramer served as the Academy Museum’s managing director of development and external relations from 2012 to 2016. He shepherded the museum plans through the city council’s approval processes.

Congratulations to Cipkowski and Kramer for a marvelous achievement in the world of cinema. The ability to attract major directors, production crews and gifted actors to the Twin Counties is one of the great things about the area. The Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, with its connection to Hillsdale, is another.