Three cities, 16 years and $1 billion later, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens

By Jacqui Palumbo, Dan Heching, CNN

Los Angeles (CNN) — In the gardens of the long-awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a 19th-century cast of Antonin Mercié’s sculpture of David conquering Goliath neighbors a bronze statue of Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt with a chain. Rosie the Riveter stands by, her gaze averted.

A collection of odd bedfellows, perhaps. But this party of underdogs also offer a fitting welcome to a sprawling new institution that, at every turn, argues that all forms of art and mythology on display here — from comic book illustrations and “Star Wars” concept art to Impressionist masterpieces and reproductions of the Sistine Chapel — are worthy of equal consideration within the long arc of human history.

More than 16 years after first proposing a cultural institution dedicated to visual storytelling, filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, will open their long-awaited museum in Los Angeles on September 22. The project made two false starts — plans to construct it in San Francisco and Chicago were both eventually abandoned — and has cost Lucas around $1 billion of his own money to build (the recently opened Obama Presidential Center, for context, cost $850 million).

Inside, visitors will find a significant slice of Lucas’ private collection, amassed over five decades and spanning art, costumes, movie props and memorabilia, with more than 1,300 objects currently displayed across 30 galleries.

“This has been a long haul,” Lucas told reporters at a private press opening Wednesday. “Part of the problem is I’m a contrarian. I don’t like to do things that people think can be done.”

“This one almost broke my will,” he added, “but the great people that we’ve assembled to do this has been a big advantage. We still had to deal with bureaucracies and people who have contrary thinking, but we managed to make our way through all that.”

Many fans will come for the “Star Wars” vehicles and sculptures of Yoda and Grogu, but the sci-fi mega-franchise only occupies about 7% of the museum. Lucas and Hobson are betting those visitors will stay for artworks by Frida Kahlo and Norman Rockwell, photographs by Gordon Parks, comics by Frank Miller and Cowboy Bebop anime, which will be screened in one of two theaters alongside early silent movies, Lucas’ own student films and productions by famed historical artists like Man Ray.

Considering the canon

In recent years, major art institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s Tate Britain have reconsidered the cultural canon by rehanging their permanent collections, exhibiting overlooked or marginalized artists alongside more widely celebrated names. The Lucas Museum appears to follow a similar philosophy, contending that the gravitas of an artwork is not just determined by its display in space but by what it’s in dialogue with. Lucas has even called his namesake museum “a temple to the peoples’ art,” elevating the work of illustrators and other underappreciated art forms.

The collection is elevated in a literal sense, too. Housed inside a sinuous white design by MAD Architects and Stantec, the Lucas Museum looks like a spaceship hovering above South Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. Architect and MAD founder Ma Yansong said, however, that he took inspiration for the 300,000-square-foot building from the forms of clouds.

“The building is actually less about shape, and more about the experience inside the space,” he explained at the press preview. “I wanted to make the central plaza very spiritual, everyone (who) goes there can imagine something very different.”

This lofty ambition can be felt everywhere, from the futuristic tube-like elevators to the surprise late addition of a top-floor exhibition dedicated to original Banksy murals, which some staff had not even yet seen. The museum defines narrative art as any art that tells a story, and, moving through the space, one feels the enormity of the task of organizing and presenting such a broad vision.

“Narrative art is important because it depicts the myths that anchor us, the stories that we believe in,” Hobson said in her opening remarks alongside Lucas. “They may not necessarily be true, but they unite us as families, as communities, as countries, as nations.”

The long view

Downstairs, the opening “History of Narrative Art” exhibit feels more like a trip through a natural history museum, as if non-human visitors were being introduced to the great artifacts of human creativity displayed in glass portals or digitally projected onto gallery walls. This is where you’ll find recreations of ancient cave paintings, the Sistine Chapel, the Capitoline Wolf with Romulus and Remus, and a portrait of Henry VIII, mixing in reproductions and alternative ways of presenting works that couldn’t be physically brought into the museum.

An elevator ride to the fourth floor brings you to where most of the museum’s collection is housed. Visitors can weave from a collection of Rockwell paintings, including the famous Civil Rights-era work “The Problem We All Live With,” to a room featuring Luke Skywalker’s X-34 Landspeeder. Some rooms are dedicated to individual artists, such as Rockwell and the fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. Others are organized by theme: adventure, romance, civic life. The open-plan, curvilinear design means the galleries are not fully divided, reinforcing the all-encompassing nature of the collection, though altogether the vast array of exhibits sometimes struggle for cohesiveness.

Disjointed curation may reflect turbulence in the museum’s management ahead of the opening. Last April, former director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont departed, with Lucas himself assuming responsibility for “content direction.” A month later, the museum laid off 15 full-time and seven part-time staff before chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas resigned in December, with no replacement planned.

At the press preview, current CEO Tracey Bates maintained that Lucas has “always had a front seat with the curatorial.” She added: “He was always the lead curator. So that hasn’t actually changed. His vision’s always been the same.”

Ever since the museum was first announced in 2010, critics have questioned whether it is a vanity project for the filmmaker (the $25 adult ticket prices and high membership fees have further irked his detractors). After failing to secure a site in San Francisco, Lucas faced public opposition and a lawsuit in Chicago, with nonprofit Friends of the Parks arguing that his lakefront proposal would essentially privatize public land.

Amid the delays and setbacks, simply opening the museum may feel like a victory to its founders. For now, it’s unclear how they might handle future exhibitions, whether they’ll stage new displays from the permanent collection or look to commissions and loans.

“We’re still figuring things out,” said senior curator and head of film, Ryan Linkof, at Wednesday’s press event, adding: “And we have all kinds of ideas for what comes next.

“There are certain exhibitions that do need to be rotated, just by virtue of the fact that they’re works on paper — comics, photography, children’s book illustration, things that were made on fragile materials. There might be exhibitions that stay on longer. But there will always be something new to see at the Lucas Museum.”

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