{"id":761020,"date":"2026-09-05T17:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/761020\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T17:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T17:00:20","slug":"yoda-meets-frida-kahlo-george-lucas-1-billion-museum-isnt-just-for-star-wars-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/761020\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoda meets Frida Kahlo: George Lucas\u2019 $1 billion museum isn\u2019t just for Star Wars fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s hard to miss the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The newly opened 300,000-square-foot building is a sleek, futuristic vision of sweeping polymer-clad concrete and glass that hovers beside the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles. \u201cIt\u2019s the one that looks like a spaceship, right?\u201d asks my taxi driver. Yes, this is the museum you\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n

The ambitious architecture is certainly appropriate for an institution founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas<\/a> and his wife, the high-flying business executive Mellody Hobson, and bankrolled to the tune of a reported $1 billion. If the Lucas name on the outside leads visitors to assume the inside is full of spaceships too, they\u2019ll be half-right. <\/p>\n

At the opening \u201cStar Wars in Motion<\/a>\u201d exhibition, fans will get the opportunity to pose with vehicles including Luke Skywalker\u2019s Landspeeder and Anakin\u2019s Podracer, but Lucas\u2019 ambition is something far grander than simply a place to store his old props. His museum sets out to tell the story of narrative art throughout human history, from cave paintings to comic books, and to highlight the common thread of myth-making that connects it all.<\/p>\n

The result is a sometimes disorientating mixture of high and low culture. This is surely the only place in the world where Frida Kahlo<\/a> faces off against Batman, with a 1940 self-portrait by the Mexican artist on show across a corridor from a Lindy Hemming-designed Batsuit from The Dark Knight<\/a>. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s an early Van Gogh and a Picasso sketch, but there\u2019s also Charles Schulz\u2019s original Peanuts illustrations, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge\u2019s dogs playing poker and a whole gallery dedicated to Frank Frazetta, whose work was originally intended to adorn the covers of fantasy paperbacks but now looks right at home on museum walls.<\/p>\n

\"LukeLuke Skywalker’s Landspeeder is one of the Star Wars vehicles on display at George Lucas’ new museum in Los Angeles (Kevin E G Perry\/The Independent)<\/p>\n

During a press conference, Lucas explained his belief that the artists whose works surround us in everyday life deserve to be elevated to the level of old masters. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I felt very strongly about in terms of honoring illustrators, artists who illustrate stories that are already written, and most of those stories are myths; they\u2019re not real, but the illustrations make them real,\u201d said Lucas. \u201cA picture is very powerful, and stories are very powerful, and you combine them together, and those two elements create a society. That\u2019s why I wanted to build this.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m used to doing the impossible\u2026 but this one almost broke my will.<\/p>\n

George Lucas<\/p>\n

It has been, in Lucas\u2019 words, a \u201clong haul\u201d to make the museum a reality. Originally planned for San Francisco, and then Chicago, the project was forced to change location in part because Lucas refused to compromise on his vision. In the end, he ended up just across the road from USC, where the 82-year-old was once a film student. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been 17 years, between getting kicked out of cities and trying to get this built, which has been in itself eight years,\u201d said Lucas. \u201cPart of the problem is, I\u2019m a contrarian. I don\u2019t like to do things that people think can be done. I\u2019m fascinated by doing things that people say can\u2019t be done. I\u2019m used to doing the impossible\u2026 but this one almost broke my will.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GeorgeGeorge Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson speaking at a press preview of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (Stefanie Keenan\/Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)<\/p>\n

Some critics have already turned their noses up, claiming that \u201cnarrative art\u201d is a made-up category, and arguing that the museum needs to do more to explain and contextualize the work it is presenting. Sitting in the museum\u2019s wood-lined, horseshoe-shaped library, CEO Tracey Bates tells me that the decision to let the art speak for itself was \u201cvery intentional\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"FridaFrida Kahlo’s 1940 work ‘Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser’ stares across at Christian Bale\u2019s Batman suit at George Lucas’ museum (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge has always said that narrative art is storytelling in one frame,\u201d says Bates. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have to be told what is happening, because what you see in it will evoke some sort of engagement with it. So that really is up to the viewer. George wanted people to focus on the image, not the text next to the image.\u201d<\/p>\n

She acknowledges that the Lucas name will attract plenty of Star Wars fans to the museum, and says the gallery that\u2019s currently full of vehicles from the films will be rotated to make full use of what the filmmaker has in storage. \u201cWe\u2019re very proud of the archives, but we also want to make sure we\u2019re celebrating other cinema makers,\u201d she says. \u201cGeorge himself will tell you he did not want it to be about himself, so that\u2019s why [Lucasfilm archives are] only seven per cent of the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the museum is clearly intended as a place of celebration, as I wandered the galleries and took in the painstaking work that went into creating early comic strips, book covers and magazine illustrations, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder if the Lucas Museum will become a temple of preservation for a dying skillset. <\/p>\n

\"BritishBritish street artist Banksy personally installed his work in a gallery dedicated to murals at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (Stefanie Keenan\/Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re surrounded by more narrative art than ever, but its production has become mechanized and automated. The idea of a magazine commissioning an artist like Norman Rockwell to paint an original artwork for their cover is now sadly a thing of the past. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou walk through the Rockwell Gallery and see his process, the way he works with line drawings into paintings, and the fact that he would get those images out almost weekly at one point is extraordinary,\u201d says Bates. \u201cI think one of the things we can hope for here is to instill that creative spark in people and to hope that some visitors will become storytellers and creatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MaMa Yansong compares his design for the Lucas Museum to a \u2018belly\u2019. \u2018It makes you feel protected, and very safe,\u2019 says the architect (Hufton+Crow)<\/p>\n

The building itself plays a part in that. The architect, Ma Yansong, tells me he was inspired by watching the clouds above Los Angeles and not, as I suggest, by the floating Cloud City that appeared in The Empire Strikes Back. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the future is cold, like a machine or an abandoned factory. It should be warm, human and intimate.<\/p>\n

Lucas Museum architect Ma Yansong<\/p>\n

He acknowledges, though, that he and Lucas have shared tastes. \u201cI like Star Wars,\u201d says Ma. \u201cThere is a connection. He saw one of our previous designs, for the Ordos Museum in China. That museum was inspired by Star Wars, a scene where a spaceship landed in the desert. We both like science fiction and nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum sits on a 13-acre site surrounded by gardens, dotted with sculptures. Many are nods to the museum\u2019s founder, with Yoda overlooking a water fountain and a bronze recreation of Princess Leia battling Jabba the Hutt in pride of place.<\/p>\n

\"'Princess‘Princess Leia Frees Herself from Jabba the Hutt’, by Mark Newman and Giovanni Nakpil, is given pride of place in the museum’s sculpture garden (Kevin E G Perry\/The Independent)<\/p>\n

For all the space-age imagery, Ma reveals that when he looks at the museum he sees something altogether more earthborn. \u201cThis architecture is almost like a belly,\u201d he says. \u201cIt makes you feel protected, and very safe.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an illustration, he says, of his \u201coptimistic\u201d view of the future. \u201cI don\u2019t think the future is cold, like a machine or an abandoned factory,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt should be warm, human and intimate.\u201d <\/p>\n

This sense of comfort and belonging is conveyed simply by shape and form, with no need for words. It\u2019s the Lucas Museum\u2019s mission writ large: Every picture tells a story.<\/p>\n

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles opens on September 22<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-761020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761020","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=761020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}