As the most high-profile example of looking a gift horse on the mouth, it’s a straight shootout between Los Angeles and San Francisco as to who gets to call the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art home. And whichever location gets it, it’s set to be a game changer.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, as it will be called, promises hundreds of jobs and a high-profile attraction — and it’s essentially free.
The “Star Wars” creator is financing the project himself. He plans to spend more than $1 billion to build the museum, endow it and provide a trove of initial artworks valued at over $400 million. Together with Chinese architect Ma Yansong, Lucas has proposed a sleek, futuristic design looks like a cross between the Guggenheim and a galactic starfighter.
The museum’s bold design and concept make clear that the 72-year-old filmmaker sees it as part of his legacy, and he is increasingly impatient to break ground.
“It’s not just an enormous philanthropic gift to a city and to the world, but it is a unique museum in the way it is envisioned,” said Don Bacigalupi, an art historian and respected museum director Lucas hired as its founding president. “Certainly, we’ll be looking forward to the day we can move the art into a museum.”
The museum will not, as many assume, be a repository for “Star Wars” memorabilia.
It will, however, show how Lucas spent some of his filmmaking fortune and that his interest in art extends beyond movies.
