George Lucas’ new Los Angeles museum puts illustrated myths and popular storytelling at center stage, while keeping “Star Wars” to a supporting role.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will open September 22 in Los Angeles, with more than 1,300 works displayed across roughly 33 galleries, CBS News reported.
Founded by filmmaker George Lucas and businesswoman Mellody Hobson, the 300,000-square-foot museum aims to give narrative art a serious home. That means pictures that tell stories, from comic strips and magazine covers to movie designs and protest graffiti.
The museum sits in Exposition Park, just south of downtown Los Angeles. Architect Ma Yansong designed the building, which took nearly two decades to bring from idea to completion.
Lucas and Hobson built the collection around myths, love and other themes that cross artistic categories. Lucas described narrative art in plain terms: “Well, it’s art that illustrates a story.”
Lucas knows his name will bring expectations. He created “Star Wars,” and the museum includes concept paintings by Ralph McQuarrie along with other material from the films.
But Lucas said “Star Wars” accounts for only about 7% of the art. The rest reaches across magazine illustration, comic art, paintings, children’s art and other forms often kept apart by traditional museum categories.
The New York Post reported that the science-fiction displays include a Naboo N-1 Starfighter, Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and speeder bikes. It also said the museum has 100,000 square feet of exhibition space and will charge adults $25.
Lucas acknowledged that the famous film franchise helps get some visitors through the door.
“When we finally found a home here in L.A., I said, ‘Well, we can’t not have some “Star Wars” stuff in it, because that’s what’s driving a certain group of people that love “Star Wars” into the museum.’”
That is a practical choice, not a surrender of the museum’s purpose. Familiar machines and movie images may attract the first look. The wider collection then asks visitors to consider why pictures shape what people remember and believe.
“No matter what you look at here, it’s emotional,” Lucas said. He also rejected the idea that the institution should be reduced to a monument to his movies.
“I kept saying, ‘It’s not a “Star Wars” museum, it’s a narrative art museum. It’s about telling stories.’”
Hobson said the museum uses the word “myth” often. She defined myths as things people believe even when they are not necessarily true. Lucas added that people accept them because they can feel emotionally true.
Love provides one example. Lucas called it complex and difficult. Hobson said popular images tend to show its romantic side while leaving out heartbreak, pain and anguish.
“Most depictions of love that we see are the happy versions of love. It’s the romanticized view of love. Love is actually heartbreak, pain, anguish, but the myth of love is happiness and joy.”
The point is direct: Pictures do more than decorate a wall. They carry moral lessons, cultural assumptions and shared memories. Some reinforce myths. Others challenge them.
The collection includes works tied to Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, V. T. Hamlin and Banksy. It began on a far smaller scale when Lucas bought an “Ally Oop” comic strip for about $35 while he was in college.
The museum endured setbacks and moved through several proposed locations before finding its Los Angeles home. At one difficult point, Hobson suggested giving the collection to another institution and ending the effort.
Lucas refused. “I am building this museum!” he told her. Hobson’s answer was equally clear: “OK, we’re building a museum.”
Lucas ultimately put at least $1 billion of his own money into the project. That private commitment gave him room to build around his own judgment rather than wait for approval from the institutions that had long treated illustration as a lesser form.
His persistence also fits the way he describes himself. “I’m a contrarian,” Lucas said.
“Contrarians are the ones that nobody likes, because they’re thinking outside the box, and they’re doing things that nobody’s ever done before, so they always assume that it’s wrong. You know, those are people who said, ‘I don’t care. I know it seems impossible, but I’m gonna do it.’”
Private wealth can fund vanity projects. It can also build something the established gatekeepers overlooked. The test will be whether the public finds meaning in the art once the doors open.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, Lucas’ longtime friend and a museum board member, said the new institution will serve artists who have not always won acceptance from the art establishment.
“George has changed the world with some of his ideas, as he’s going to change the world with the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Give people a place to go to see illustration art, to see muralists, to see comic art, to see children’s art. He’s giving a forum, a venue for artists that are not always accepted in the institutions of the art world.”
That mission challenges a narrow view of culture. A comic strip, magazine cover or film concept painting can shape public memory as surely as work already honored by major museums.
Hobson said the Lucas name appears on the building to bring people inside. She also said Lucas is not sentimental and has no interest in nostalgia for its own sake.
Lucas made much the same point when asked about his legacy. He said he does not spend time thinking about awards, reputation or how history will remember him.
Hobson instead wants children to leave believing they can create their own masterpieces. When she searched for the quality required, Lucas supplied one word: “Stubborn!” Hobson completed the thought with “absolutely committed.”
Good institutions preserve great work. Better ones also tell ordinary people that creation is not reserved for a favored class of cultural gatekeepers.
