Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/859699
18 P E R S P E C T I V E | S E P T E M B E R / O C TO B E R 2 0 1 7 news Above, clockwise from top left: Stefania Cella, Naomi Shohan, Jon Gary Steele, David Wasco, Karen TenEyck, Patrick Sullivan and Helen Jarvis. MOTION PICTURE ACADEMY ® MEMBERSHIP INVITATIONS by Michael Baugh, Production Designer The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ® has invited seven Art Directors Guild members to join the Academy as part of its Class of 2017. Production Designers Stefania Cella, Naomi Shohan, Jon Gary Steele, and this year's Oscar ® winner David Wasco, Art Directors Helen Jarvis and Patrick M. Sullivan, and Graphic Designer Karen J. TenEyck are among the twenty-five Art Department professionals invited to join the Academy's designers branch. This is fewer than the thirty-two artists invited last year, but the Academy as a whole, surpassed last year's record number with a whopping 774 potential new members from fifty-seven different countries. Outgoing Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has taken serious strides to invite a more dynamic range of professionals to join the Academy and vote in the Oscars. From 2015 to 2017 alone, there has been a 359 percent increase in women invited to join the Academy and a 331 percent increase in people of color, and this year's new class is thirty-nine percent female and thirty percent persons of color. Seven branches invited more women than men, including the actors, executives, film editors and our own designers branch. Also invited to join the branch are Production Designers Jim Clay, Antxón Gómez and Carl Sprague; Art Directors Toni Barton and Isabelle Guay; set decorators Danielle Berman, Kelly Berry SDSA, Ellen Christiansen SDSA, Beverley Dunn SDSA, Regina Graves SDSA, Paul Hotte SDSA, Tina Jones SDSA, Kathy Lucas, Shane Andrew Vieau and Elizabeth Wilcox SDSA; Concept Illustrator Javier Ameijeiras; property master Brad Einhorn; and location manager Elston Howard. The Academy began in 1927 with 293 members in five branches. If all of the invited artists actually join, the ninety-year-old organization will grow enormously to a total membership count of 8,427 members spread across seventeen branches. Congratulations to this year's new invitees (we can't properly call them Academy members yet, since none are obligated to accept the invitation).