The Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts is on track to open in 2023, and museum director Sandra Jackson-Dumont talks to the LA Times about the new addition to the city.
“We’re super excited about the opening of the Academy Museum — it’s so necessary as a new addition to the Los Angeles community and it will expand the cultural landscape,” Jackson-Dumont said. “But I’m happy to say that the only film museum in the city is the Academy Museum because the Lucas Museum is a museum dedicated to narrative art; it’s not about film only.”
Narrative art, she added, “cuts across space and time and really is about visual storytelling through a range of material. It’s photography, it’s painting, it’s sculpture, it’s ephemera from newspapers and magazines, it’s all of those things.”
COVID-19 health and safety protocols may have slowed construction and pushed the Lucas Museum’s targeted 2022 debut, but the futuristic-looking Ma Yansong-designed building is progressing, Jackson-Dumont said.
The museum secured the final beam in its steel structure and “topped out” in March. Construction of two movie theaters, second-floor classrooms and the fourth-floor galleries — about 80,000 square feet of exhibition space — is underway. The galleries will feature works from Lucas’ personal collection of more than 100,000 pieces of fine and popular art as well as “Star Wars” ephemera.
The museum recently hired a deputy director of public programs and social impact, Regan Pro, who comes from the Seattle Art Museum, where she held a similar position. Key positions in the library, operations, programming and curatorial departments will be announced in the first quarter of next year.
The Lucas Museum also is beefing up its collection. Earlier this month it acquired Alice Neel’s painting “Fish Market” (1947), which was part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent retrospective, “Alice Neel: People Come First.” In May the Lucas Museum acquired Robert Colescott’s 1975 painting “George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page From an American History Textbook,” which Jackson-Dumont calls a vehicle “to explore and unpack racially, socially and historically charged and significant figures.”
It’s also added contemporary works by Southern California artists to its permanent collection, including Cara Romero’s “The Last Indian Market” (2015) and Criselda Vasquez’s “The New American Gothic” (2017).
But Jackson-Dumont may be most excited about a work the museum acquired in late 2020: Frida Kahlo’s “Autorretrato Dedicado al Dr. Eloesser” (Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser) (1940), which was included in the de Young Museum’s recent exhibition “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving.”
“It’s one of her most important works,” Jackson-Dumont said. “It was painted during a particularly tumultuous time in her life, and it incorporates images that tell about aspects of her experiences. There’s a thorn necklace around the neck, the earrings were a gift from Picasso, the banner inscribed with a dedication to the physician that helped her during her time in the Bay Area. We’re looking forward to inviting people to discuss this work, see this work. I think this is the “Mona Lisa” of Mexico, it’s beautiful.”
The museum has also added several archives to its collection. This spring it acquired a nearly 3,000-object collection of artworks and other materials by Mexican political lithographer José Guadalupe Posada. It also acquired Judith F. Baca’s archive documenting the making her epic, half-mile-long mural, “The Great Wall of Los Angeles.” She’s the first female muralist represented in the museum’s collection.
And if you’re intrigued by the colorful art on the museum’s construction fence along Bill Robertson Lane, that’s a project between the Lucas Museum and arts nonprofit L.A. Commons. The art is by 21 local students who worked with muralist Noni Olabisi and L.A. artist Luis Mateo to create narrative art for the fence. The works touch on themes of neighborhood and community, family and friendship.
“It’s exciting,” Jackson-Dumont said of all the momentum. “It’s a really amazing moment. We’ve been busy on every level.”
We look forward to the museum opening in 2023.
