{"id":37636,"date":"2025-08-01T07:32:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/37636\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T07:32:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:32:15","slug":"george-lucas-reveals-new-details-of-los-angeles-museum-at-comic-con-panel-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/37636\/","title":{"rendered":"George Lucas reveals new details of Los Angeles museum at Comic-Con panel – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Lucas, the Star Wars film-maker and art collector who with his wife Mellody Hobson, the president and co-chief executive of Ariel Investments, is building the $1bn Lucas Museum of Narrative Art<\/a> in Los Angeles, made his first-ever appearance at Comic-Con on 27 July to share new details about the institution ahead of its opening next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 50 years now, and then it occurred to me that, what am I going to do with it all?\u201d Lucas said. \u201cI refuse to sell it. I\u2019m not one of the typical high art collectors who buys and then you comes back five years later and say, \u2018What happened to that painting you bought, that was so beautiful?\u2019 \u2018Well, I sold it for $10m, I made a lot of money on it.\u2019 I could never do that. It\u2019s not what I think art is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel was moderated by actor and rapper Queen Latifah and featured fellow film-maker Guillermo del Toro (who also serves on the museum’s board) and the production designer Doug Chiang. It began<\/a> with a six-minute video, narrated by Star Wars actor Samuel L. Jackson, offering new views and renderings of the museum\u2019s distinctly futuristic, 300,000 sq. ft building in Exposition Park, designed by Ma Yansong of the firm Mad Architects.<\/p>\n

Interior images show some of its more than 30 galleries, along with immersive spaces featuring reproductions of cave paintings and an entrance flanked by two lamassu sculptures (ancient Mesopotamian statues of winged lions with human heads) from around 710 BC. The museum will also feature art and objects related to the Star Wars franchise, including concept art and models of futuristic vessels.<\/p>\n

The video also offered a rapid-fire look at some of the around 40,000 objects said to be in Lucas and Hobson\u2019s collection, from original Iron Man and Black Panther comic book art for to drawings by R. Crumb and Jack Kirby, political cartoons and animation cells. It also showed off some of the highlights of the museum\u2019s fine art collection<\/a>, including works by Frida Kahlo, Robert Colescott and Norman Rockwell.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From left to right, Guillermo del Toro, George Lucas, Queen Latifah and Doug Chiang at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art panel at Comic-Con International 2025 at San Diego Convention Center on 27 July 2025 Photo by Eric Charbonneau \/ Lucas Museum of Narrative Art via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a temple to the people\u2019s art,\u201d Lucas said of the museum. He described his interest in art as being \u201cmore about a connection and emotional connection with the work, not how much it cost or what celebrity did it. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything anyone will tell you. If you have [an] emotional connection, it\u2019s art. If you don\u2019t, just move onto the next painting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Del Toro and Chiang praised Lucas and Hobson for placing comics and illustration on equal footing with fine art, eliciting frequent applause from the 6,000-strong crowd inside the San Diego Convention Center. <\/p>\n

\u201cComic art and magazine illustration were kind of looked down upon,\u201d said Chiang, who serves as the senior vice president an executive design director at Lucasfilm, the production company Lucas founded in 1971. \u201cWhat I love about what George and Mellody are doing with this museum is they are acknowledging and giving respect to artists who really haven\u2019t been highlighted before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel comes at a moment when Lucas has taken more direct control of operations at his namesake institution. Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the museum\u2019s director and chief executive since 2020, left in March<\/a>, with Lucas becoming solely \u201cresponsible for content direction\u201d. In May, the museum laid off 14% of its staff<\/a>, including 15 full-time roles and seven part-time positions; many of the cuts came from the museum\u2019s education and public programming departments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Lucas, the Star Wars film-maker and art collector who with his wife Mellody Hobson, the president and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,22013,1120,96,22014,99,22012,10345,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-37636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-building-projects","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-george-lucas","tag-los-angeles","tag-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art","tag-museums-heritage","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}