George Lucas chooses location for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Famed filmmaker George Lucas has announced the chosen location for his new $1 billion museum. The city of Los Angeles won over San Francisco for the bid to house the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, after a drawn out process of deliberation. According to the museum’s board of directors: “Settling on a location proved to be an extremely difficult decision precisely because of the desirability of both sites and cities."

In the end, LA’s Exposition Park proved to be the most desirable location, perhaps in large part due to the ease of accessibility for the public – whilst the park is easily reached by public transportation, San Francisco’s proposed location, a four-acre piece of land in the middle of the San Francisco Bay titled Treasure Island, is only accessible by ferry, or one connecting bridge.

Despite the insistence that this is not to be a Star Wars museum, the association to the movies remains a strong one, given the futuristic vibe of the museum’s spaceship design (the work of Chinese architect Ma Yansong). 

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will indeed contain memorabilia from the Star Wars films, but these pieces will be accompanied by other elements from Lucas’ personal collection, which includes vintage photographs and an impressive selection of traditional paintings (including some Hockney pieces). With all these elements, it is definitely intriguing to see how the museum plans to present a cohesive overview of narrative art.  

The museum is scheduled to open on May 4^th (of 2020) – the date that Star Wars fans celebrate every year as Star Wars Day, as the pronunciation of “May 4^th” plays upon the films’ famous adage: “May the Force be with you”.



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Image: Rendering of the planned Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles