Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opens in Los Angeles After 17 Years

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a $1 billion institution conceived 17 years ago, opens to the public on Tuesday in Los Angeles. "Star Wars" creator George Lucas described it as a "temple to the people's art" and a project that "almost broke my will."

Located in Exposition Park near his alma mater, the University of Southern California, the museum has become a life's work for Lucas and his wife and co-founder, businesswoman Mellody Hobson. Its galleries are filled almost entirely with their own collections.

The 82-year-old filmmaker has long favoured projects considered impossible. The museum was first planned for San Francisco and then Chicago, reaching the initial design phase in both cities before Lucas said he was "kicked out." The Los Angeles version mixes populist painters, commercial illustrators and comic artists with fine artists more typically associated with major museums.

Star Wars, but only a fraction

In the green space around the building, visitors will find statuary including a sculpture of Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia in her metal bikini choking Jabba the Hutt, a scene from 1983's "Return of the Jedi." Titled "The Hutt Slayer" and commissioned for the site, it is one of several nods to "Star Wars" in and around the museum, though that galaxy represents only a small part of its holdings and initial exhibits.

The inaugural "Star Wars in Motion" exhibit displays vehicles from the original trilogy and the Lucas-directed prequels. A Naboo starfighter hangs permanently in the lobby of the library. Paths through the grass offer views of statues of Yoda, Grogu and Natalie Portman's Padmé Amidala.

From Rockwell to Banksy

The museum holds paintings by artists such as Norman Rockwell, long considered the opposite of cool, alongside younger and hipper content. In a hard-to-find fifth-floor gallery are two walls of stenciled murals by the elusive British street artist Banksy, who worked personally with Lucas on his contributions. The work, announced in the final weeks before opening, includes the familiar image of a girl releasing a heart-shaped balloon. Nearby are activist murals by artists including Judith Baca and Diego Rivera.

Architect Ma Yansong's big, billowing building appears to hover around and envelop surrounding structures, including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. He has likened it to a cloud, and its signature spot may be an opening in that cloud — an oculus in the centre of the dome above the main plaza that looks almost celestial.

Ma described the spot as "almost like a spiritual space." "I think architecture is a narrative, is storytelling," he said. "The plaza, the oculus, the roof, different atmospheres that we provided, I think it's very important that the building become an emotional space for people."

A Kahlo portrait and a poker game

A Frida Kahlo portrait in a prominent spot on the fourth floor will look familiar to many visitors, but its presence is rare. The 1940 "Autorretrato Dedicado al Dr. Eloesser," or "Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser," was acquired by the museum in 2020 and became one of the few such portraits held outside her native Mexico.

It shows Kahlo with a bloom of flowers in her hair, wearing a thorn necklace with drops of blood and silver earrings gifted by Pablo Picasso, whose work is also in the collection. Soon after the acquisition, the museum's director at the time told the Los Angeles Times she considered it "The Mona Lisa of Mexico." The painting is dedicated to Leo Eloesser, a San Francisco Bay Area physician who helped Kahlo with chronic pain. A banner across the bottom calls him "mi médico y mi mejor amigo" — my doctor and my best friend.

A few steps from the Kahlo hangs Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's 1894 "Poker Game," showing a group of dogs playing cards. Often considered the height of lowbrow, kitschy barroom art, it is the first in a series of 18 oil paintings on the theme by the American artist, and it gets an elevated view in a museum that specialises in such work.