The Force is strong in LA as ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas’ launches dream museum
Wielding a silver shovel rather than a lightsaber, “Star Wars” creator George Lucas has broken ground on a $1.5 billion Los Angeles museum he says will be dedicated to the art of visual storytelling.
The writer-director was joined by his wife, elected officials and more than 100 wellwishers Wednesday for the official beginning of construction on the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
Construction is expected to be completed in 2021.
With thousands of exhibits, ranging from paintings to comic strips to film props, costumes and storyboards, Lucas says exhibits will attempt to explain visual storytelling from the days of cave paintings to modern movies.
The groundbreaking more closely resembled a movie premiere minus the red carpet. More than a dozen television cameras were on hand to record it.
Among those who showed up to support Lucas was his longtime friend and sometime collaborator, director Steven Spielberg.
“Star Wars” creator George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson have privately funded the project with a gift of over $1 billion. That will cover the non-profit institution’s building costs, the value of Lucas’ vast art collection which it will display and an operating endowment which, among other things, will pay for new additions to the museum’s collection.
Lucas said Wednesday that he hopes his new museum will bring people together.
“Obviously, the most advanced version of narrative art is the movies,” said Lucas, who joined several dignitaries, including L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti at the groundbreaking ceremony. “What can you do with the various issues that bring people together as a society?”
The Beijing-based architect Ma Yonsongdesigned, appropriately spaceshippy building and 11 acres of new park and garden space are replacing parking lots in the park south of Downtown L.A., near the campus of Lucas’ alma mater, the University of Southern California. The museum’s five levels of approximately 300,000 square feet of interior space will provide about 125,000 square feet of gallery space for Lucas’ Degas, Norman Rockwell, Maynard Dixon, Robert Crumb, Frank Frazetta and hundreds of other fine and popular art pieces that express the many ways, throughout human history, that pictures can tell stories.
Emphases will also be placed on photography, digital and, of course, cinematic art (and not only from “Star Wars”). The facility will feature two state-ofthe-art movie theaters, restaurants, digital and editing classrooms and a free library.
With more than 100 schools in the vicinity, massive educational outreach programs are planned. The project is expected to generate around 1,500 construction and 350 permanent jobs. Built by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, efforts will be made to include local and diverse businesses in both the construction and operation of the facility, including women-, minority- and veteranowned small businesses. Construction jobs will be provided to unionized area workers, and local and disadvantaged L.A. residents will be given employment and training opportunities.
“South Los Angeles’s Promise Zone [an urban poverty-fighting initiative] best positions the museum to have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and diverse visitorship,” a January 2017 press release from the museum’s board of directors announcing the decision to locate in L.A. said. “Exposition Park is a magnet for the region and accessible from all parts of the city. As a museum uniquely focused on narrative art, we look forward to becoming part of a dynamic museum community, surrounded by more than 100 elementary and high schools, one of the country’s leading universities as well as three other world-class museums.”