Academy Museum gets $5-million gift from the late Shirley Temple Black’s family

The late Shirley Temple Black and her family are giving money and memorabilia totaling more than $5 million to the planned Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, leaders announced on Thursday.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also announced that its capital campaign is now aiming to raise $388 million toward the new museum building, exhibitions and programs. The amount represents a nearly 30% increase from the campaign’s previously announced goal of $300 million.

The opening of the museum was recently pushed back to 2018 in part because of negotiations with a community group over changes to the museum.

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The capital campaign has received $250 million in commitments to date, an academy spokeswoman said. She also confirmed that the higher goal is related primarily to exhibitions and programming, as well as budgetary contingencies.

Academy leaders said that Temple Black’s gift includes an undisclosed monetary contribution as well as significant artifacts from the former child star’s movie career, including the miniature Oscar statuette presented to her at the 1934 Academy Awards.

In recognition of the gift, the academy said the museum’s education center will be named the Shirley Temple Education Studio.

Following her movie career, Temple Black served as the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and then Czechoslovakia. She died last year at 85.

Bob Iger, the Disney chief who is chairing the museum’s capital campaign, said in the announcement that “her gift to the Academy Museum ensures her work will continue to inspire future generations of film lovers.”

Temple Black’s family added, “Our mother believed that the Academy Museum project will provide the key to broader public understanding both of the movie industry’s history and of its future.”

Other objects that the family is donating include the tap shoes and portable wooden practice-steps given to the actress by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson for their dance routine in the 1935 movie “The Little Colonel,” and the L.A. public-school system desk she used for her daily lessons on the Fox lot.

The Academy Museum has received a number of multimillion-dollar gifts from prominent individuals and companies including Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, the Dolby Laboratories and China’s Dalian Wanda.

Twitter: @DavidNgLAT

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