Director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures to Step Down

LOS ANGELES — Kerry Brougher, the director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, is leaving his position this summer, before a date has even been set for the museum’s opening.

After multiple construction delays and cost overruns, the $400 million museum — featuring a futuristic, spherical addition by Renzo Piano to the May Company building on Wilshire Boulevard — is expected to open sometime in 2020.

The museum board said in a statement that Mr. Brougher is leaving “to return to his roots in the art world,” without specifying his next step. The board added that “Kerry’s strong curatorial team will continue to work with us toward the Museum’s opening, and a search for a new Museum Director will begin shortly.”

Mr. Brougher, who will be given the title of founding director, noted that he has shepherded the project to an important stage. “We are just weeks away from completing construction of the buildings, ending the first phase of this project, and our collection has grown substantially,” he said in a statement.

He started the job five years ago after serving as chief curator and acting director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.

At the end of last year, he announced the inaugural shows for the new museum, founded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars. The main lobby will showcase the institution’s flashy holdings of “The Wizard of Oz” material from production drawings to Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Temporary exhibitions on the roster include a retrospective of the work of the Japanese filmmaker and animator Hayao Miyazaki, followed by “Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1900-1970.” Plans for the permanent collection galleries on the second and third floors are not yet clear.

A competing entertainment-themed museum, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, is also under construction in Los Angeles, in Exposition Park. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson to showcase their personal collection — rich with Norman Rockwell paintings as well as Star Wars memorabilia — the Lucas Museum is “a few years out from opening,” said Alex Capriotti, a spokesperson. It also lost a director this year, the art-world veteran Don Bacigalupi, and a search for his replacement is in progress.

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