Movie Poster Children

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If movies can be said to subliminally express the hubris or anxieties of their makers' times, then movie posters are the films' more obvious mirrors of those feelings. For three months the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will feature an exhibit devoted to this overlooked art form. "Art of the Movie Poster" covers 38 posters from the 1950s through the 1980s, displaying not only one-sheet lobby art work for such works as Paths of Glory, The Great Escape, The Group and In the Heat of the Night, but also contrasting preliminary sketches and concepts, and alternate and competing work for those same films.

According to the Academy, a companion installation, "Irving Thalberg: Creating the Hollywood Studio System, 1920-1936," will feature the "unpublished photographs, poster art, props and costumes from motion pictures overseen by Hollywood's original 'Boy Wonder.'"

Academy's Grand Lobby Gallery & Fourth Floor Gallery, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills; free. (310) 247-3600.