Michael Barker, who has been a cinematic tastemaker as a founder and co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, will join the Museum of the Moving Image as co-chairman of its board of trustees, the museum plans to announce on Monday. He succeeds Herbert S. Schlosser, the former NBC president and chief executive, who served as the chairman beginning in 1985, and became co-chairman, in 2013, with Ivan L. Lustig.
Mr. Barker established the art-house division of Sony Pictures Entertainment with Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom in 1992, and continues to run it with Mr. Bernard as co-president. The unit has released films like “Howards End,” “The Fog of War” and “Midnight in Paris,” and become associated with Woody Allen, Bennett Miller, Pedro Almodóvar and Michael Haneke, among other filmmakers.
The Museum of the Moving Image, in Astoria, Queens, said that Mr. Barker was elected to the co-chairman position at a board meeting in October and will officially assume the role on Feb. 1. Mr. Schlosser will remain on the board as chairman emeritus.
In a statement, Mr. Barker praised the museum as “a great institution devoted to motion pictures of all shapes and sizes,” one that is “filled on any given day with hundreds of school kids, teachers, tourists, New Yorkers, from the general public to the die-hard cinephile, there is an incredible energy to the place.” He added, “Filmmakers, artists, and industry practitioners adore it as much as I do.”