The new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will serve "Star Wars” fans what they crave, but the saga George Lucas spawned represents just one small corner of the galaxy of creative work within the walls of the Los Angeles institution he calls a "temple to the people’s art.”
The purpose of the palace that has become his life's work since he sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 is to take the work of populist painters, commercial illustrators, comic artists and paperback cover-creators and treat it with a reverence normally reserved for Rembrandts.
"That’s really what the mission is, that there’s these incredibly familiar pieces that have not had the opportunity to be platformed in this manner, to be placed like this, to be curated in this way, for people to really see the genius behind it,” museum CEO Tracey Bates said in an interview with The Associated Press (AP) inside the museum.
The building opens to the public Sept. 22.
The 82-year-old Lucas made an unannounced appearance at a media preview day at the museum on Wednesday with his wife, businessperson Mellody Hobson, the museum's co-founder. He said he couldn't believe the place now exists after being conceived 17 years ago and having been "kicked out of” proposed locations in cities including San Francisco and Chicago, places where previous sites fell through.
