Annette Bening, Tom Hanks co-chair fundraising campaign

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is enlisting some Hollywood heavy hitters to help raise money for the proposed Academy Museum.

Walt Disney Co. president and CEO Bob Iger will serve as chairman of the capital campaign for the upcoming museum. Actress Annette Bening and actor-producer Tom Hanks will join as co-chairs.

With Bob, Annette and Tom's leadership, our dream of finally opening a world-class film museum in Los Angeles will become a reality, Academy president Tom Sherak said in a statement.

In October, the group behind the Oscars announced plans to locate a museum in the old May Company department store building, which is owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Though Los Angeles is the center of the film industry, the city has yet to have a top-shelf museum devoted to its most famous industry. With permanent and rotating exhibitions, the museum is intended to rectify that by documenting the history of the motion picture industry.

The proposed Academy Museum will occupy a 300,000 square-foot space.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures represents a bold new way of saving and presenting film history, Iger said in a statement. It will innovate not only the museum experience, but also the public's relationship to the art form.

I am thrilled to be part of this crucial phase in what will be an extraordinary landmark, Bening remarked. It will give so much to our city, to historians, and to visitors from all over the world, who love movies.