The future Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, located in the Los Angeles fairgrounds, resembles a stranded spaceship over which nature has taken over. Nature had time. Indeed, since the start of its construction in 2018, the opening of the museum, initially planned for 2021, has been postponed three times: 2023, 2025 and 2026. We will therefore have to wait another year for the museum created by the filmmaker and director of Star Wars, George Lucas, and his wife Mellody Hobson, is finally open to the public, after eight years of work.
If its opening was delayed so much, it is due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This made it difficult to transport certain materials from Europe to California. Health measures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic guaranteeing the safety of workers on the site had also slowed down its construction. The fact remains that the health crisis has been over for 3 years, and the museum does not explain why it postponed its opening from 2025 to 2026.
Designed by Chinese architect Ma Yansong, the building cost $1 billion. It rises over five floors and occupies an area of 28,000 m². It consists of an envelope of more than 1,500 curved fiberglass-reinforced polymer panels, three curved glass elevators and a tree-studded roof garden, all supported by 281 seismic isolators. The building includes cinema, educational and conference rooms, a restaurant and a public library, as well as exhibition spaces.
The museum, directed by Sandra Jackson-Dumont, previously at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will not be devoted to the filmmaker’s work, but to his collection of 100,000 paintings, photographs, illustrations and comic book drawings. This includes works by Frida Kahlo, prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, all highlighted by a narrative rather than formal approach. “Narrative art tells the story of a society — and above all the common beliefs that hold it together”explains Georges Lucas on the site dedicated to the museum.
