Shirley Temple Black was one of the most successful child actors of her time. Temple earned a special Academy Award for her contributions to screen entertainment in 1934. For this Gallery Conversation, special guests Senior Vice President of Preservation and Foundation Programming Randy Haberkamp, and Associate Director of Special Collections and Photograph Archive Warren Sherk, will discuss Temple’s significance in movie history and her importance as the top box office star during the 1930s. Ephemera from home movies and images from the Academy’s Special Collections will be available as we learn about the namesake for the museum’s Shirley Temple Education Studio.  

In the Studio, the museum’s Chief Projectionist, Spencer Christiano, will be using an inspection bench for a closer look of an IB-Technicolor print of The Blue Bird (1940), before and after the Gallery Conversation. 

The program will take place near Shirley Temple’s desk, currently on display on the museum’s Lower Level, outside the Education Studio

Special Guests

Warren Sherk 
Warren Sherk is the Associate Director of Special Collections and Photograph Archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. He oversees the acquisition of new diverse collections, manages the processing of collections to make them accessible for research use, and excites and inspires others to appreciate and use original source materials documenting film history. Sherk served on the Academy’s museum planning committee and presented at the Film Librarians Conference, was keynote speaker for the First Conference of Chinese Film and Television History in Guangzhou, and was a guest speaker at the University of Arizona School of Film and Television on the topic “Archiving the Past and Present.” Among his published works are The Films of Mack Sennett and Film and Television Music: A Guide to Books, Articles, and Composer Interviews. 

Randy Haberkamp 
As Senior Vice President of Preservation and Foundation Programming for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Randy Haberkamp has direct oversight of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, the Academy Film Archive, public programming, and the Academy’s Oral History Project. He received his master’s degree in Motion Picture Production from UCLA and worked for the CBS Television Network for 14 years culminating as Director of Specials and Feature Films. Haberkamp has worked as a freelance television producer and as a talent agent and is the founder of The Silent Society, a silent film preservation and appreciation group that has presented and preserved silent films in Los Angeles for more than thirty years. He is originally from Ohio. 

Spencer Christiano 
Spencer Christiano is the inaugural Chief Projectionist at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where he is responsible for all technical and projection aspects of the 288-seat Ted Mann Theater and the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater. He is a co-editor and co-author of The Art of Film Projection: A Beginner’s Guide (2019), a comprehensive outline of the materials, equipment, and knowledge needed to present the magic of cinema to an audience. He has taught the techniques of film inspection and projection at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, the National Film Archive of India, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and the University of Rochester. His work as a playwright includes Endangered Features (2016), a one-person show about the world of film archiving, film projection as a technical art, and the evolution of cinema exhibition from its analog roots to cutting-edge digital. 

Image: AP/Marty Lederhandler.