hosting so many of his own<\/a> in April and May when the new Geffen Galleries opened.<\/p>\n ![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790005581_318_.jpeg\")
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\u201cStar Wars\u201d legend Mark Hamill and his wife, Marilou York, were guests at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Lucas and Hobson went to great lengths to explain why the Lucas Museum matters and why it is different from other museums. Their comments, in many ways, sought to address the criticism that has been lobbed at the museum since it held its press preview a few weeks back. <\/p>\n
Though it has received a number of rave reviews, critics have called narrative art a false conceit and argued that the juxtaposition of masterworks with pop culture ephemera does not work. Much of the criticism has been focused on a perceived lack of context since there is almost no wall text clarifying why certain curatorial choices were made. <\/p>\n
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George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson hosted an extravagant opening party at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started it, everybody said, \u2018You\u2019re crazy. You shouldn\u2019t do it. It\u2019s not going to work. People are going to come after you,\u2019\u201d Lucas said of his plans for the museum. \u201cI said, \u2018People have come after me all my life, especially in the movies.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucas also addressed why he curated the museum\u2019s 100,000 square feet of gallery space on his own, noting that at a certain point plans were \u201cgetting off the rails.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to have to take this over because people don\u2019t understand what I\u2019m doing,\u201d Lucas recalled thinking. \u201cThe idea that illustration is an art form and illustrators are artists was just too much for somebody who had been taught otherwise by the art schools that they went to and the universities that they went to.\u201d<\/p>\n
People with PhDs often can\u2019t see the big picture, Lucas said, \u201cYou can\u2019t say \u2018This is art. This is not art.\u2019 Art is in the eye of the beholder. If it is emotional to you, then it\u2019s art. And, of course, I\u2019ve been criticized up and down and sideways for that. But I believe it wholeheartedly \u2014 that you get to decide what art is.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790005582_985_.jpeg\")
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Members of the Virginia Beach vocal collective Voices of Fire, co-founded by Bishop Ezekiel Williams and Pharrell Williams perform at the Lucas Museum.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Lucas noted that throughout his career he has worked with many illustrators, \u201cand I will tell you, they are as talented as any artist I\u2019ve ever met. This is the way of giving back to them something that they\u2019ve all wanted … inevitably, all of the illustrators say the same thing \u2014 everybody from R. Crumb to Rockwell \u2014 they all say, \u2018I wish I could be in a museum,\u2019 but they can\u2019t. There isn\u2019t a major museum in the world that\u2019ll have this kind of art in it. I\u2019m hoping this will change that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucas\u2019 comments came after his friend and co-host Queen Latifah noted to the cheering crowd that, \u201cParis has the Louvre, New York has the Met and now L.A. has the artistic equal.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Guests](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790005582_760_.jpeg\")
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Guests mingle at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n
It took more than a decade for the Lucas Museum to land in L.A. after a search that included Chicago and San Francisco as well as lots of civic pushback and lawsuits over the use of public parkland.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not realize how hard it would be to give a city a museum,\u201d Hobson said during her remarks, later joking: \u201cIf your husband or spouse comes home and says they want to build a museum, I suggest your response is a hard no.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Laura](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790005583_970_.jpeg\")
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Laura Dern, left, and Greta Gerwig spent the early part of the night chatting and laughing.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Hobson went on to extol Lucas\u2019 vision and his ability to never waver from his dream for the museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was driven to create a space that would showcase the brilliant illustrators that he thought were too often overlooked and ignored,\u201d Hobson said. \u201cAnd if critics say that a museum of narrative art is too much like a popcorn movie and not enough like an art film, well, we love popcorn movies in our family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like a popcorn movie, the evening ended happily with a drone show in the night sky narrated by Winfrey and Jackson, and featuring images from the museum\u2019s collection including the Cave of Altamira, N.C. Wyeth\u2019s \u201cThe Storybook,\u201d Julie Bell\u2019s \u201cThe Huntress,\u201d Banksy\u2019s \u201cGirl With Balloon,\u201d the \u201cStar Wars\u201d Millennium Falcon and Maxfield Parrish\u2019s \u201cEcstasy.\u201d <\/p>\n
Afterward the party moved inside from the rooftop terrace for a performance by the Black Eyed Peas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If George Lucas invites you to a party, you go. That much was clear Saturday at the Lucas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2308,12837,8142,11273,185201,185202,11921,48,52,51,47,50,49,32317,23374,4287,46824,61239,592,158704,34380],"class_list":["post-470929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-comment","tag-crowd","tag-hobson","tag-illustrator","tag-kim-kardashian","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lucas-museum","tag-mark-hamill","tag-movie","tag-narrative-art","tag-oprah","tag-people","tag-peter-jackson","tag-spike-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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