It looks like the Academy is ramping up its collection for the upcoming Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, nabbing the Aries 1B Trans-Lunar Space Shuttle from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The Academy bought the model at the Premiere Prop's Hollywood Extravaganza Auction on Saturday for a sizable $344,000.
The shuttle can be seen at length in a memorable sequence in "2001," as it transports Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) from the International Space Station to investigate a monolith that was buried on the crater Clavius by unknown aliens. The model is approximately 32" high, 27" wide and 28" deep with a diameter of 94".
According to the auction house, the director of the landmark 1968 film, Stanley Kubrick, purposely destroyed most of the props, sets, models and costumes from the movie so that they could not be used for other films. The shuttle, however, survived, with an art teacher acquiring it in 1975 under an agreement that the electronics be removed from the model to demonstrate the technology to his students.
Other items at the auctions included costumes from "Silver Linings Playbook," "Captain America: The First Avenger," "August: Osage County" and "St. Vincent," along with hundreds more pieces of memorabilia.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is set to open in late 2017, with construction set to start next week.
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