George Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art To Open September 22

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a $1 billion institution founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, investor Mellody Hobson, is set to open in Los Angeles on September 22. The museum, which features 100,000 square feet of gallery space, will celebrate visual storytelling across various forms, disciplines, and time periods.

Lucas articulated the museum's mission at a press preview on Wednesday, stating,“A picture is very powerful, and stories are very powerful. When you combine them, those two elements create a society.” He added that narrative art fosters a common belief system, allowing people to collaborate rather than conflict, and to achieve things beyond individual capacity.

The museum's journey has faced numerous delays over the past decade. Initial plans for locations in San Francisco and then Chicago preceded the groundbreaking in Los Angeles in 2018. Pandemic-related issues further postponed the opening from 2022 to 2025. Additionally, the institution experienced leadership changes, with CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont stepping down a little over a year before the launch, followed by chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas months later. In July, Tracey Bates was appointed as the new CEO. Regarding the chief curator role, Bates informed the New York Times that Lucas“has always been the chief curator.”

Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the curvilinear building at Exposition Park was inspired by clouds, though Yansong noted it also resembles a spaceship. The museum complex includes a research library, two theaters, and a restaurant. The surrounding sculpture-adorned gardens were designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA.

Central to the museum's offerings are its narrative art displays. A ground-floor exhibition,“The History of Narrative Art,” guides visitors through storytelling from ancient examples like the Lascaux cave paintings and Moche portrait vessels to works by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Caravaggio, illustrating how themes such as royalty, war, religion, and myths have shaped visual culture. Senior curator Ryan Linkof emphasized the selection criterion:“All art in a way tells a story. But for us, the criterion really is: is this object interested and invested in telling stories?”

Many works in this introductory gallery are digital reproductions on high-definition screens, including an impressive recreation of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel murals. However, physical paintings such as Artemisia Gentileschi's The Triumph of Galatea (1649–50) and John Singer Sargent's Las Meninas (1879) are also on display.

The fourth floor highlights the museum's extensive collection across themed sections including History, Family, Play, Photography, and Science Fiction, featuring artists such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, and Jessie Wilcox Smith. The Childhood section includes works by N.C. Wyeth and Margaret Keane, Motherhood features a Mary Cassatt, and Sports showcases pieces by Ernie Barnes and Grandma Moses. A Manga section presents Naoyo Kimura's portrait of Pikachu wearing Vincent van Gogh's gray felt hat. Strengths of the collection are also evident in Fantasy, with works by Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, and Rowena Morrill, and a dedicated space for Frank Frazetta, anchored by his A Princess of Mars (1970). The Comics and Graphic Stories sections feature artists like R. Crumb, Charles M. Schulz, Chris Ware, and Alison Bechdel.

A new, unannounced work by Banksy is installed just outside the Children's Stories gallery, depicting a pair of stone lions, one holding a whip in its teeth with a top hat nearby and a light spray of red paint on its mouth. More Banksy pieces are part of the inaugural exhibition on the fifth floor, which explores murals and monuments and“the use of public space as a way of telling stories that are socially charged in one form or another,” Linkof said. This exhibition includes Banksy's Girl With Balloon (2002), No Ball Games (2009), and a maquette for a flag statue unveiled in London in May. Other notable pieces are Judith F. Baca's drawings for her 1978 mural The History of California and a recreation of Diego Rivera's Man, Controller of the Universe (1934), a fresco originally painted for the Rockefeller Center lobby and later destroyed.

The Cinema section proved particularly popular during the preview, displaying Lucas's Star Wars collection. This includes conceptual artworks by Doug Chiang, original R2-D2 and C-3PO costumes by Norman Reynolds and John Mollo, a landspeeder from A New Hope (1977), and a model of the Millennium Falcon by Joe Johnston, among other items.

The museum's curated juxtapositions, such as a Frida Kahlo portrait near a Batman costume or Frida Kahlo's painting in proximity to Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's A Pat Hand (a“Dogs Playing Poker” painting), challenge traditional art hierarchies. Linkof observed,“All kinds of conversations come out when you just allow artworks to live next to each other.” Lucas has referred to the institution not merely as a museum, but as a“temple to the people's art.”

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is located at One Lucas Plaza in Los Angeles, California.

Source: Artnet News

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