The Lucas Museum

The latest big new museum is the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which houses the art collection of George Lucas and his wife, Melody Hobson. It looks like a spaceship, but then, what else was it going to look like? The architect was Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, who has done several large museums in China.

Based on the photographs in this NY Times piece, the building has the same problem as others designed around a cool shape: it looks great from a distance, but up close you're just standing next to molded concrete.

Anyway the point of the museum is to display what Lucas calls "narrative art," that is, visual images that tell stories. That includes comic book art (Jim Lee and Scott Williams, Future State: Justice League, 2001)

Book illustrations (Maurice Sendak)

Cover art from fantasy novels, (Julie Bell, The Huntress, 1996)

Stuff that looks like Norman Rockwell, (John Philip Falter, Lunch Counter, 1946, detail)

And historical work (Howard Pyle, Phoenician Traders, 1904)

Of course the museum holds the Lucasfilm archives, including the original art by Ralph McQuarrie, the chief visual designer of the Star Wars universe.

Persusing the museum web site, I mainly get warm feelings. The last big new art museum in Los Angeles, the Broad Museum, seemed to me a product of its patrons' desire to seem really, really cool. With the Lucas Museum I have the sense that this is all stuff the patrons actually like.

I mean, doesn't this classic N.C. Wyeth illustration capture the artistic vision of George Lucas as well as anything? The museum opens September 22.