Academy film museum’s managing director to step down for post at design school

Bill Kramer, a key figure in shepherding the Academy Museum from conception to construction, explained in an interview why he’s stepping down as managing director at the end of this year: He’s taking a high-ranking position at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Kramer’s duties have included overseeing fundraising for the museum, which has reached about $250 million in cash and pledges toward a recently escalated goal of $388 million. Construction leading to a projected opening in spring 2018 began recently and is expected to cost $300 million, the previous campaign goal; $88 million has been added for programming and exhibitions.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter >>

“I would never leave this project unless I felt we were in excellent shape,” said Kramer, who joined the project in 2012 after working as a fundraising executive at California Institute of the Arts, Southern California Institute of Architecture and Columbia University’s School of the Arts. “My heart and soul have gone into making this work, and we’re in very safe hands.”

Museum director Kerry Brougher said Kramer has done “an amazing job.”

“Naturally we wish Bill were [staying] here, but it’s such a great opportunity for him that I’m very happy for him.”

The museum is beginning to look at potential successors, Brougher said, with hopes of finding Kramer’s replacement before he leaves.

One of Kramer’s main tasks had been to help steer the museum plan through government environmental reviews, which came to fruition when the Los Angeles City Council approved the project in late June. Then Kramer spent two months helping negotiate an agreement with leaders of a civic group, Fix the City, that had threatened to sue to stop the project if concerns about traffic, parking and signage were not allayed.

Brougher said Kramer’s successor will be able to focus largely on raising money.

Kramer said that at RISD, the respected art and design school in Providence whose alumni include artist Kara Walker and the three founding members of the rock band Talking Heads, he will be a vice president working closely with the school’s president, Rosanne Somerson.

The Academy Museum recently filled its coffers with the lion’s share of $359 million in proceeds from a bond issue that investors snapped up last week, with $35 million reserved to pay off borrowing from an earlier project by the film museum’s parent organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Andy Horn, the Academy’s chief financial officer, said Monday that it will pay an effective rate of 3.99% interest on part of the bond issue -- $213 million worth of securities with fixed rates that don’t change over the life of the bonds, which will range from five to 30 years.

The rest of the bonds are variable rate securities whose interest rates fluctuate with market conditions. The current rate on those is 1%, Horn said.

Moody’s Investors Service gave the bonds a rating of Aa2, defined as “high quality and … subject to very low credit risk.” However, Moody’s analysts sounded a sour note before the bonds were sold by reducing their investment advisory regarding how the Academy’s creditworthiness is trending from “stable” to “negative.”

Moody’s cited the possibility that pledges might not come in quickly enough over the next 12 to 18 months to feed the project and to help cover interest payments; another negative, it said, was the Academy’s limited sources of income, with broadcasting rights for the annual Oscar ceremony accounting for 75% of its operating revenues.

Like most museums, the Academy Museum will depend extensively on donations for construction and ongoing operations, although it envisions charging admission comparable to ticket prices at its next-door neighbor, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which charges $15 for general admission.

Horn downplayed the “negative” outlook on the bonds and the concerns about possible nonpayment of pledges. “We’re in very good shape and we’re confident [the pledges] are all going to come in,” he said. “The overall rating, we’re very happy with.”

Horn said that a core category of pledges -- those backed by a donor’s signature -- totals $215 million, of which $62 million has been paid to date. He said that the other $35 million that makes up the $250 million the Academy says it has raised so far includes less formal, unsigned pledges and an undisclosed amount the Academy has earmarked from its own coffers for the project.

A recent staff report on the bond issue by the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, a state agency that helps nonprofit organizations issue tax-free bonds, said that $6 million of the bond proceeds will go toward paying LACMA, which is leasing an unused former May Co. department store building to the Academy for $36.1 million. The lease covers 55 years and is renewable without further cost.

The previous $35 million bond issue that’s being paid off dated from the 2000s and was related to the Academy’s film archive center in Hollywood.

The infrastructure bank’s staff report shed a bit of new light on the private agreement between the Academy and Fix the City, saying the Academy will pay for monitoring traffic and noise through the end of 2027, when the agreement expires. It says provisions include unspecified “limited penalties” that the Academy will pay if traffic and noise exceed agreed limits.

Follow https://twitter.com/boehmm of the L.A. Times for arts news and features