Shark Week might have already passed, but shark season is just getting started at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which is debuting its first large-scale show dedicated to a single film this Sunday—“Jaws: The Exhibition.” Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s suspenseful shark-starring masterpiece, the exhibition transports you to Amity Island, walking you through the pre-production, filming, plot and lasting cultural impact of the original summer blockbuster.
Since its opening, the Academy Museum has displayed an important piece of Jaws history: The last remaining full-scale model of Bruce, the famously problematic mechanical shark used during filming, is the largest object in the museum’s collection and hangs epically above the escalators. But with the new exhibition, he’s now supplemented by over 200 original items—props, storyboards, script pages, cameras, costumes and more—used in the production of the film. Some of these came from the studio or Spielberg’s own personal collection, while others were preserved by crew members or private collectors since 1975.
Located in the fourth-floor Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery, “Jaws: The Exhibition” tells the story of the film in six sections. The highlight is the immersive “Into the Deep” gallery, which takes you out on the water with a re-creation of the Orca, the fishing boat Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw set sail on. You’ll also see the underwater cage and spear used in the film and, fittingly for the Academy Museum, one of the three Oscars that Jaws won at the time, for best sound.
The exhibition also offers a couple of fun interactive features. First, you can re-create one of the most famous shots in the film—and film history, in fact—the dolly zoom onto Chief Brody’s face when he’s sitting on the beach and realizes the shark has attacked. The effect—the camera moving closer while the lens zooms farther out—was first used by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo (1958), but it’s often associated with Jaws for the way it silently but effectively depicts Brody’s dread. (Fast-forward to today, and the technique has become famous for its use in Severance each time the characters transition from their outie to innie selves in the Lumon elevator.) Across the room, you can see the zoom lens used to film the original shot, as well as an underwater camera responsible for those below-sea-level shots of swimmers’ legs. Another display highlight is the ominous dorsal fin used onscreen in both the original Jaws and its (non-Spielberg-directed) sequels.
Elsewhere in the galleries, you can follow easy directions to play John Williams’s iconic and Oscar-winning dun-dun theme (it’s just the notes E and F, if you were wondering), pose in a sand dune like the film’s first victim, sit at a table in the Orca and swap war stories, and use manual controls to make an interactive model shark move—a smaller-scale version of how the filmmakers made Bruce move on set.
“Jaws: The Exhibition” opens September 14 and will run through July 26, 2026. You can see it during the museum’s open hours—Wednesdays through Mondays from 10am to 6pm—and it’s included with the $25 price of admission for adults (ages 17 and under get in free). You can buy tickets here. And if revisiting Jaws has you in the mood for more Spielberg, you’re in luck: The Academy Museum just announced that it will host the first-ever retrospective exhibition dedicated to the prolific director, due to open in 2028.
For now, there are tours and talks scheduled to coincide with the Jaws exhibition, as well as a screening of the film in 4K this Sunday at 6:30pm. Advance tickets are currently sold out, but standby tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis the day of.