By Travis Johnson
How are you planning on spending your retirement? George Lucas is devoting his golden years to a $1bn museum dedicated to all forms of narrative art, from illustration to cinema to whatever weird distractions littler the pathway to the singularity. You were gonna get into gardening? Maybe take a woodworking course? Bet you feel pretty silly now.
Having finally decided to locate the institute in Los Angeles’ Exhibition Park, he board of the Lucas Museum of Narrative spake thusly:
“After extensive due diligence and deliberation, the Board of Directors of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is pleased to announce plans to build the museum in Exposition Park in Los Angeles. We have been humbled by the overwhelmingly positive support we received from both San Francisco and Los Angeles during our selection process. Settling on a location proved to be an extremely difficult decision precisely because of the desirability of both sites and cities.
Now we turn our attention to finalizing the details and building what we believe will be one of the most imaginative and inclusive art museums in the world—a global destination that all Angelenos and Californians will be proud to call their own.”
Lucas himself donated the museum’s initial collection, which covers 150 years of varying media, with many more items expected to be acquired going into the future. More than a tourist attraction, the museum will be an education hub dedicated to the study of narrative forms and an important part of both Los Angeles as a city and visual narrative as an industry, artform and area of study.
This is, frankly, a momentous and ridiculously exciting undertaking, and you can learn more about it at the official site here. In the meantime, I think we can stop giving George stick about the Prequels from here on in.
