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

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).

Courtesy The Obama Foundation

A first look inside the $850 million Obama Presidential Center

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.

Grace Widyatmadja/CNN

“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.

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.”

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.

Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

A Qing Dynasty vase 200 years ahead of its time

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.”

在人们翘首以盼的卢卡斯叙事艺术博物馆花园里，安托南·梅西耶创作的19世纪雕塑《大卫战胜歌利亚》的复制品，与莱娅公主用铁链勒死贾巴·赫特的青铜雕像相邻。铆工罗西站在一旁，目光躲闪。

或许这是一群风格迥异的艺术家组成的联盟。但这群不被看好的艺术家也恰如其分地欢迎着这座规模庞大的新机构的到来。该机构处处都在强调，这里展出的所有艺术和神话形式——从漫画插图和《星球大战》概念艺术到印象派杰作和西斯廷教堂壁画的复制品——在漫长的人类历史长河中都值得同等重视。

在首次提出建立一座致力于视觉叙事的文化机构 16 年多之后，电影制作人乔治·卢卡斯和他的妻子、女商人梅洛迪·霍布森将于 9 月 22 日在洛杉矶开设他们期待已久的博物馆。该项目曾两次启动失败——在旧金山和芝加哥的建设计划最终都被放弃了——卢卡斯为此投入了约 10 亿美元的个人资金（作为参考，最近开放的奥巴马总统中心耗资 8.5 亿美元）。

图片由奥巴马基金会提供

首次探秘耗资 8.5 亿美元的奥巴马总统中心

在馆内，参观者将看到卢卡斯私人收藏的大量藏品，这些藏品是他五十多年来积累的，涵盖艺术品、服装、电影道具和纪念品，目前有超过 1300 件物品在 30 个展厅展出。

格蕾丝·维迪亚特马贾/CNN

“这真是一场漫长的拉锯战，”卢卡斯周三在一次私人新闻发布会上告诉记者。“部分原因是我比较特立独行。我不喜欢做人们认为可以做到的事情。”

“这件事几乎击垮了我的意志，”他补充道，“但我们聚集起来的优秀团队是一大优势。我们仍然需要应对官僚主义和持不同意见的人，但我们最终克服了所有困难。”

许多星战迷会慕名而来，参观《星球大战》的载具以及尤达和格罗古的雕塑，但这部科幻巨作系列仅占博物馆面积的7%左右。卢卡斯和霍布森相信，这些参观者会因为弗里达·卡罗和诺曼·洛克威尔的画作、戈登·帕克斯的摄影作品、弗兰克·米勒的漫画以及《星际牛仔》动画而驻足。《星际牛仔》动画将在两个放映厅之一与早期无声电影、卢卡斯的学生作品以及曼·雷等著名历史艺术家的作品一同展出。

近年来，纽约现代艺术博物馆和伦敦泰特美术馆等主要艺术机构通过重新布置永久藏品，将一些被忽视或边缘化的艺术家与更广为人知的艺术家并列展出，从而重新审视了文化经典。卢卡斯博物馆似乎也秉持着类似的理念，认为艺术作品的分量不仅取决于其空间布局，更取决于它所与之对话的内容。卢卡斯甚至称其同名博物馆为“人民艺术的殿堂”，旨在提升插画家和其他被低估的艺术形式的作品。

从字面上看，这座博物馆的藏品也得到了提升。卢卡斯博物馆坐落于由MAD建筑事务所和斯坦泰克公司设计的蜿蜒白色建筑内，宛如一艘悬浮在洛杉矶南部博览公园上空的宇宙飞船。然而，建筑师兼MAD创始人马岩松表示，这座占地30万平方英尺的建筑的设计灵感来源于云朵的形态。

“这座建筑的重点其实不在于外形，而在于内部空间的体验，”他在媒体预览会上解释说。“我希望中央广场充满灵性，让每个到访者都能产生不同的联想。”

这种远大的抱负处处可见，从未来感十足的管状电梯，到令人惊喜的顶层临时增设的班克斯原创壁画展（甚至有些工作人员之前都没见过）。博物馆将叙事艺术定义为任何讲述故事的艺术，而漫步于此，人们不禁会感受到组织和呈现如此宏大愿景的艰巨任务。

“叙事艺术之所以重要，是因为它描绘了那些维系我们生活的神话，那些我们所信仰的故事，”霍布森在与卢卡斯一同致开幕词时说道。“它们未必都是真的，但它们将我们团结在一起，让我们成为家庭、社区、国家和民族。”

楼下，开幕展“叙事艺术史”更像是一次自然历史博物馆之旅，仿佛非人类参观者正被引入一个奇幻世界，欣赏透过玻璃展柜或以数字投影形式呈现在展厅墙壁上的人类伟大创造力的结晶。在这里，您可以看到古代洞穴壁画、西斯廷教堂壁画、卡比托利欧山上的狼与罗穆卢斯和雷穆斯的雕像，以及亨利八世的肖像画的复制品，其中还穿插着一些无法实物搬入博物馆的复制品和另类展示方式。

乘坐电梯到达四楼，即可到达博物馆大部分藏品的所在地。参观者可以从诺曼·洛克威尔的画作系列（包括著名的民权运动时期作品《我们共同面对的问题》）漫步到展示卢克·天行者X-34陆地飞车的展厅。部分展厅专门展示洛克威尔和奇幻艺术家弗兰克·弗雷泽塔等艺术家的作品。其他展厅则按主题划分：冒险、爱情、公民生活。开放式的弧形设计意味着各个展厅并非完全分隔，这强化了藏品包罗万象的特质，但同时，如此众多的展品有时也显得缺乏整体性。

Peter Parks/法新社/盖蒂图片社

一件领先时代200年的清代花瓶

策展工作的脱节或许反映了博物馆开幕前管理层的动荡。去年四月，前馆长兼首席执行官桑德拉·杰克逊-杜蒙离职，卢卡斯本人接任“内容方向”一职。一个月后，博物馆裁掉了15名全职员工和7名兼职员工，随后首席策展人皮拉尔·汤普金斯·里瓦斯于十二月辞职，目前尚未确定继任人选。

在媒体预览会上，现任首席执行官特蕾西·贝茨强调，卢卡斯“始终在策展方面占据核心地位”。她补充道：“他一直都是首席策展人。所以这一点实际上并没有改变。他的愿景始终如一。”

自2010年首次宣布兴建博物馆以来，批评人士一直质疑这是否是这位电影制作人的个人项目（25美元的成人票价和高昂的会员费更是激怒了他的反对者）。在旧金山选址失败后，卢卡斯在芝加哥遭遇了公众的反对和诉讼，非营利组织“公园之友”认为他提出的湖滨方案实际上是将公共土地私有化。

尽管遭遇了诸多延误和挫折，但对博物馆的创始人而言，能够顺利开馆本身或许就是一种胜利。目前尚不清楚他们将如何安排未来的展览，是会展出馆藏新作，还是会寻求委托创作或借展。

“我们仍在摸索前进，”高级策展人兼电影主管瑞安·林科夫在周三的新闻发布会上说，并补充道：“我们对接下来要做的事情有很多想法。”

“有些展览确实需要轮换，因为它们是纸上作品——漫画、摄影、儿童绘本插画，以及其他用易碎材料制作的作品。当然，也有一些展览会持续展出更长时间。但卢卡斯博物馆总会有新的展品可供参观。”