Gallery Spotlight: Lights, Camera, Pride with Pickle and Friends

Join us in conversation with Senior Exhibitions Curator Jenny He and Curatorial Assistant Alexandra James Salichs as they discuss Jaws: The Exhibition, the newest and first-ever production of this scale dedicated to a single film at the Academy Museum. The conversation will explore the development and curation of the exhibition that revisits Jaws (1975) scene by scene, featuring original objects, behind-the-scenes revelations, and interactive moments. This conversation will be moderated by author and professor J.D. Connor.

Curator Bios

Jenny He is Senior Exhibitions Curator at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Since 2021, she has curated exhibitions on John Waters, Pedro Almodóvar, Hildur Guðnadóttir, animation filmmakers, special and visual effects artists, and other subjects for the museum. Previously, she independently curated and toured The World of Tim  Burton  to worldwide institutions, after co-curating the retrospective exhibition Tim Burton at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which toured to venues such as LACMA, Cinémathèque Française, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. For MoMA, among other exhibitions, Jenny has curated retrospectives on the Coen Brothers, Lillian Gish, and Kathryn Bigelow.

Alexandra James Salichs is a curatorial assistant at the Academy Museum. Her most recent contributions as a curatorial assistant are Barbie to Anna Karenina: The Cinematic Worlds of Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer and Jaws: The Exhibition. As a research assistant, she worked on Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema and its exhibition catalog. Prior to joining the Academy Museum, she worked as an intern at the Museum of Modern Art, Hamptons International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival. She also co-programmed screenings at Columbia University and Amherst College. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Film and Media Studies from Amherst College and Columbia University.

About Gallery Spotlights

During Gallery Spotlights, the Education and Public Engagement team invites visitors to explore the Academy Museum’s ongoing exhibitions that presents the diverse, international, and complex stories of moviemakers and the works they create. If you have any questions or need assistance planning your visit, please email museumeducation@oscars.org.

Cyberpunk films juxtapose technological advances with social upheaval, ecological crisis, and urban decay. Central to these stories are characters who fight against technology gone haywire, global mega-corporations, or colonialism.   

Join the Academy Museum with director and filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah as she discusses the history and impact of Afrofuturism within the cyberpunk genre. They will also discuss the making of Ngozi Onwurah’s first feature, Welcome II the Terrordome (1995), the first theatrically distributed British feature directed by a Black woman.  

The conversation will be moderated by actor, educator, and futurist Ahmed Best.

About Gallery Spotlights

During Gallery Spotlights, the Education and Public Engagement team invites visitors to explore the Academy Museum’s ongoing exhibitions that presents the diverse, international, and complex stories of moviemakers and the works they create. If you have any questions or need assistance planning your visit, please email museumeducation@oscars.org.