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Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Lucas museum amps up. The LA excitement could have been happening in Chicago.
Ever since Chicago spurned the Lucas museum, which would have been funded by at least $800 million in philanthropic investments from 'Star Wars' icon George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, a Chicago native, city snobs have pushed two narratives: one that the museum would never get built and another that it would not be any good if and when it did. Both of them are proving to be nonsense, as was obvious to us from the start. Back in 2016, Chicago lost a fully funded cultural attraction that would have drawn attention and visitors from all over the world. This was a Midwestern mistake for the ages. On Sunday, Lucas showed up for the first time ever at Comic-Con in San Diego to get people excited about the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. (Did we mention this could have been in Chicago?) He appeared alongside Oscar winners Guillermo del Toro and Doug Chiang on a panel hosted by Oscar nominee Queen Latifah. Do you routinely see such folks strolling down Michigan Avenue? Not since Oprah Winfrey left, you don't. Samuel L. Jackson narrated the 'sizzle reel,' promoting the museum. To say the Lucas appearance was a hot ticket is to understate. What will be in the 300,000-square-foot museum once it opens on its 11-acre campus in Los Angeles' Exposition Park next year? Paintings by Frida Kahlo, Maxfield Parrish, Kara Lewis and Norman Rockwell, comic book art from R. Crumb and Jack Kirby, original Peanuts and Flash Gordon comic strips, a fresco panel by Diego Rivera, illustrations by E.H. Shepard for 'The House at Pooh Corner.' The comic book covers that introduced Iron Man and Flash Gordon. Concept art from 'Indiana Jones.' A life-sized Naboo starfighter. That's just a taste. There will be, to say the least, a lot of interest in all those things. Chicago failed to understand what Lucas meant by 'narrative art.' But it's really not hard: his museum will be made up of the art to which people feel emotional connections and which forms much of the basis of our shared culture. The Lucas museum will be distinct from traditional art museums and will draw accordingly. Del Toro said Sunday that he, too, will likely deposit his own formidable collection of populist narrative art within the museum. Lucas called his decade-long endeavor 'a temple to the people's art.' The people's art. Chicago would have been its natural home. The dithering and naysaying that these days seems to come with doing anything substantial in this town lost us a potential jewel. What a colossal missed opportunity.
Epoch Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
George Lucas Unveils New Museum During First Comic-Con Appearance in San Diego
'Star Wars' creator George Lucas made his first appearance at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, giving thousands of fans a sneak peek at his forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, set to open in Los Angeles next year. 'This is sort of a temple to the people's art,' Lucas, 81, said on Sunday while speaking on a panel with veteran production designer Doug Chiang and Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who serves on the board of the museum. 'This museum is dedicated to the idea that ... any kind of story that is written to affect people and to build community is extremely important to society,' the 'Indiana Jones' creator said elsewhere during the conversation. 'Art illustrates that story, and that's the right hand of building a community, is you need the art to make it seem real.' Lucas first announced the project back in 2017. According to a July 27 press release, the museum will serve as 'the world's first institution dedicated to the exploration of narrative art, celebrating illustrated storytelling across eras and cultures, from ancient cave drawings and children's book illustrations to comic books and digital media.' Lucas co-founded the museum with his wife, Mellody Hobson. Once opened, it will showcase a variety of narrative artworks from the award-winning filmmaker's extensive 40,000-piece art collection, including the first-ever 'Flash Gordon' comic strip and original 'Peanuts' strips dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. During the discussion, the panel's moderator, singer Queen Latifah, revealed that Lucas had been stockpiling his vast repertoire of artworks for more than 50 years. 'I've been collecting art since I was in college,' Lucas told the audience at Comic-Con. 'I couldn't really afford real art. I love all art, no matter what it is, but I could afford comic art because in those days it was underground.' The new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be housed in Los Angeles's Exposition Park, located across the street from the University of Southern California. In addition to the gallery spaces, the 300,000-square-foot facility, which was designed by renowned architect Ma Yansong, will feature two theaters, a retail store, a library, a café, a restaurant, and several event spaces. Chiang, the senior vice president of Lucasfilm, praised Lucas and Hobson for exposing younger generations to the art of visual storytelling. 'Comic art and magazine illustration were kind of looked down upon, but it was a way for me to enjoy art, and it invited me to learn more about art,' he shared. 'What I love about what George and Mellody are doing with this museum is they are acknowledging and giving respect to artists who really haven't been highlighted before.'
The Herald Scotland
06-07-2025
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
MLB All-Star Tom Gordon has 10 pieces of advice for sports parents
New York Yankees fans learned a familiar pitching formula in 2004 and 2005. If their team had the lead, they would see Flash Gordon's biting fastballs and sharp curveballs in the eighth inning, then Mariano Rivera's lethal cutters in the ninth. A victory was virtually sealed. The routine often started much earlier in the day, in the New Jersey suburbs where Gordon lived with his teenaged son. "Daddy, I want to go to the ball field," Dee Gordon would say as he woke up his dad. The veteran relief pitcher, now in his mid-to-late 30s, found a personal revival in what came next. They would go to a nearby diamond at 10:30 or 11 a.m. and get in their work: Father hitting son ground balls, the two talking baseball and soaking up the energy of the interactions he would replicate with similar sessions with another son, Nick. He would rest for a couple hours, feeling laser focused when he headed to Yankee Stadium. "That way of doing things took pressure off me," Tom "Flash" Gordon tells USA TODAY Sports. "I had such a regimen with working with them, where it was taking stress off my mind. And then when it was time for me to get ready to go, I can ease back into it, and then I can go as hard as I can go. They helped me just as much as I helped them." It's the way youth sports can work for parents and kids. Dee and Nick both reached the major leagues, which Flash credits to their determination to climb above their competitors, but also to a path to success his mother and father set him and his siblings along in Avon Park, Florida. Gordon calls himself an ambassador of sorts these days as he coaches and scouts for Perfect Game, a youth baseball and softball platform. "I tried to do the very best I could as a father but also I feel like my job is to pass on information that was given to me," he says. Gordon, 57, spoke with us about Rivera, Bo Jackson and George Brett, but also the wisdom of Tom and Annie Gordon that drives him, and how we can use it to guide our kids' travel sports journeys. He offers 10 tips: 1. Approach sports as a love that can last a lifetime When Flash's father, also named Tom, took his son to the ballyard, they gassed up, packed sandwiches and headed up into Alabama, Georgia or South Carolina in a parade of cars. It was a real-life barnstorm. Others came to watch, and the young boy developed an image of what it looked like to be a professional. "I got to see not the actual Negro Leagues -- the Grays and the Monarchs and teams like that -- but these small teams and these small little towns that wanted to be like them," Flash Gordon says. "It was a Negro league for them, and it was something that they needed." His father never graduated from high school, never came close to the opportunities his son had, but he embraced the life a game had given him. "He never thought he'd be a major league baseball player," Gordon says of his father. "He probably never thought that his son would and then grandsons, but what he did believe in is that he loved baseball so much to where you keep playing it, or play a sport or do something you love, until it's out of you in regards to you don't have the same drive to do it. "And I was really proud of him because he could have easily said, 'Son, I play every Sunday, and I work as hard as I could go, and I was hoping that maybe somebody would see me and like me as a player.' (He was a good pitcher.) And they never did. But he never let that deter him from being our best supporter, our best parent, our best love, and a guy that always wanted to hear how our day went." 2. It's not your sports career, it's your kids': Parents' job is to provide the experience Late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner once offered advice that Flash continues to use when he's at the Florida car dealerships he and his brothers own: It's important to be here, but it's more important for you to leave something behind. "The knowledge you have, just give that, leave it, because when you're gone, it's not yours to take with you," Flash says. He saw his parents' dedication to not only their jobs, but their roles as parents. Annie was at all of her sons' local games but also carefully sketched out activities for their sister, he says, "to create things in her life that kept her motivated and happy and excited about growing up as a kid in our household." "My mom was a stickler in staying on top of your grades," he says. "Being the oldest, you wanted to make sure that the chores around the house were done. ... I don't think I would have made it to the major leagues, I don't think I would have been the person that I've had an opportunity to become without the leadership of my parents. And I see it in my brothers, how they deal with people, respond to people. It's almost like seeing my brothers be just like my mom in a lot of ways; they have that gentle smile before they make a decision." DON'T FEAR FAILURE: A World Series champion's keys to maximizing kids' sports potential 3. Scouts look at the full person, not just their ability As he scowled from the mound, Flash thought he was tough. But he says he has plenty of his mom in him, too. Annie has helped him understand, as he roves around to showcases and events, what constitutes the most elite players. "You're looking at social media and the stuff that they're doing, it's almost like they're already gratified, they're already at that point where, 'Hey, I've shown a scout that I'm going to be great. I can hit home runs, shoot 3-pointers, I can hit a volleyball or whatever on videos and show 'em that I got a chance to be great," Gordon says. "Well, guess what? The coach and the scout have not been around you long enough to see if you're a quality enough of a person to make everybody around you better. "It looks good when you do all these things on video, but now I need to come to your house and ask your parents whether or not you do your chores on time, do you look out for your brothers and sisters, or are you someone that they have to stay on and have to constantly be motivated to do something." 4. Let your kids' sports motivation come from within Flash's son, Dee Strange-Gordon, was drafted in the fourth round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2008 and became a two-time All-Star. But his first sports love was basketball. "All of a sudden, it was like, 'Daddy, could you buy me a bat? Could you buy me a glove?' Yes, yes!' " Flash says. "It's only because they're around it so much. ... This game wasn't pushed on them to where they had to play. "Let it be about them and their career and just be more motivated to help them the best way you possibly can, reminding them, for the most part, and Nicholas had a tough time sometimes with this one: Nothing comes easy, son." THE AGONY OF YOUTH SPORTS: Tips from a Little League World Series hero-turned-major-leaguer 5. Whether you are in the dugout or bleachers, allow your son or daughter to be coached Before Nick Gordon was drafted in the first round in 2014 and would play 338 big-league games, Flash coached him in travel ball. "I moved my son from shortstop to second base. Sometimes I played him at third," Flash says. "He felt like, well, that's the wrong decision to make. However, I have to make the decision best for the entire team, not just for the fact that you're my son. "Be willing to allow your coach to coach your child, and then sit back in the stands and observe and watch the process. ... The toughest thing for a parent is when a coach changes your son's position, and maybe you don't think that's the right way. However, you're looking at it from a parent's perspective outside, and he's looking at it [from] the coach's perspective on the ground, boots down." 6. The most elite players have pregame routines After Flash Gordon was drafted by Kansas City in the sixth round in 1986, he reported to the rookie-level Gulf Coast League in Sarasota, Florida. He was a hotshot high schooler who found himself up against another Kansas City Royals prospect named Linton Dyer. Dyer's nickname was "Lightning." "Flash vs. Lightning," another Royals prospect, Bo Jackson, observed, coining Gordon's moniker. Gordon was 20 when he reached the majors. He found out how much he didn't know, when Brett called him over to his locker. "I don't see a routine, son," the future Hall of Famer said. Brett did the same thing every day. He arrived, put on his shorts, and headed off to hit and watch video. "The routine as a parent at home, getting up, those things change sometimes," Flash says, "but when you have a game that's being played at 7 o'clock, it's time for you to get a routine at 3 p.m. and have that routine ready to go and make sure that you capture those goals through that routine until game time. "I really appreciated Mark Gubicza and Bret Saberhagen. Those guys had great routines and prepared, they paid attention in the meetings, and it just inspired me to want to try and see if I could do more of that and become that much of a better baseball player." 7. We don't ever want to tear kids down, but we can use constructive criticism to motivate them Gordon learned in the majors that teammates wanted to know when they weren't pulling their weight. "Every now and then it's OK to let them know you were not that good today," he says. "Sometimes, as a leader, you have to be reminded that it ain't just about the way you see things. It's about team. We're trying to promote winning. Sometimes players think about things a week down the road when we right now are in this struggle with this other team to beat them three out of four. In the major leagues, guys come there, they all think they're ready to play, and everyone's coming to watch them. I was there. I know what it feels like. But sometimes that criticism puts things back into perspective." 8. Taking nothing for granted when you reach the upper levels of sports Sometimes Flash will look at his phone, and see that it's Bo Jackson calling, and say to himself: "What have I done now?" Bo always gave it to Flash straight if he felt he was just going through the motions. "Hey, you're in the major leagues," Jackson would tell the younger player. "Every day you take nothing for granted here. You go as hard as you can because you never know when that day that you can't play again happens. You get hurt, you may not ever be able to play again. Things don't go well, you may not find that way of being able to progress." Even when our kids reach high school sports, there is no guarantee they will play. Each game, each sliver of playing time within that game, presents an opportunity. Gordon tells kids there are always three things they can control: Your preparation, your attitude and your emotions. "If you do those things," he says, "you make my job easier, and I can help you become a much better baseball player, a much better person." 9. Find calm before you go into the storm Gordon was in his 15th full major-league season when he got to the Yankees. When he walked into the clubhouse, he'd see Rivera two lockers away. Rivera's routine was to sit there. Nothing, it seemed, could disrupt the guy who would become baseball's all-time saves leader. "We could have a bonfire in the middle of the clubhouse," Gordon says. He was putting himself in that space of mindfulness and focus where pitchers thrive. The practice kept him fresh and motivated, and it was one Gordon realized he liked himself. 10. Your No. 1 asset is being a good teammate When Flash came up with the Royals, he had lived with Jackson and his wife, Linda. He was a part of the family to the point where Bo's kids called him their brother. Gordon had just been told by then-Arizona Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch he had been released after what would be his final major-league game in 2009, when he was reminded of that feeling. He walked out of Hinch's office, and each of his teammates was there to hug him. "There's not a coach I've ever come across that's not willing to give you great information to help make you better when you're a good teammate," he says. He couldn't stop crying and yet he was at peace, like he had felt in those days when he and Dee were on the field in New Jersey. "With everything that we have today, technology and the Internet, and everything that's out there, kids' lives start to get overshadowed with them being athletes and other things that they're doing," he says. "Just stay at a place where you're more of a listener than you are someone that's giving advice. You don't have o. Sometimes just watching gives you the best perspective. Just be there for their journey." Read Part I: 'You're not getting scouted at 12': Youth sports tips from a LLWS hero Read Part II: World Series champ shares how to maximize high school, college potential Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons' baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here. Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at sborelli@
Los Angeles Times
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
George Lucas' spaceship of a museum lands in L.A. with a wonderful surprise
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, rising on what used to be a parking lot in Exposition Park in downtown L.A., is devoted to visual storytelling: the comics of Charles M. Schulz ('Peanuts') and Alex Raymond ('Flash Gordon'), movie concept art by Neal Adams ('Batman') and Ralph McQuarrie ('Star Wars'), paintings by Frida Kahlo and Jacob Lawrence, photography by Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange, illustrations by Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth. So when George Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson chose Mia Lehrer and her L.A. firm, Studio-MLA, to design the 11 acres of landscape around — and on top of — MAD Architects' swirling, otherworldly, billion-dollar building, the driving forces behind the Lucas Museum made it clear that the landscape had to tell a story too. Lehrer and her team studied how directors, illustrators and painters use topography to help amplify, among other things, emotion, sequence and storyline. 'We looked at the landscapes of myths and movies,' said Kush Parekh, a principal at Studio-MLA. 'How do you take someone on a journey through space? How does the terrain change the story — and how can it be the story?' The result — which feels surprisingly grown-in even though the museum won't open until next year — is a sinuous, eclectic landscape that unfolds in discrete vignettes, all promoting exploration and distinct experience. Each zone contains varied textures, colors, scales and often framed views. A shaded walkway curls along a meandering meadow and lifts you toward a hilly canyon. A footbridge carries you above a developing conifer thicket. A plant-covered trellis, known as 'the hanging garden,' provides a more compressed moment of pause. The environment, like a good story, continually shifts tone and tempo. 'It's episodic,' Parekh said. 'Each biome reveals something new, each path hints at what's ahead without giving it away.' A key theme of the story is the diverse terrain of California — a place that, in Lehrer's words, 'contains more varied environments in a single day's drive than most countries do in a week.' Foothills and valleys, groves and canyons, even the mesas, plateaus and plains of the Sierra and the Central Valley — Lehrer calls all of it a 'choreography of place.' Another, more subtle, layer of this narrative is time. Plantings were laid out to bloom in different seasons and in different places. Bright yellow 'Safari Goldstrike' leucadendron, edging the meadow and canyon, come alive in late winter and early spring. Tall jacarandas, spied from a foothills overlook, emerge then quickly disappear. 'Bee's Bliss' sage, lying low in the oak woodland, turn lavender blue in the early summer. Something is always emerging, something else fading. 'Every month, every visit, feels different,' Parekh said. Even the alpine-inspired plantings cladding the museum's roof — colorful wildflowers, long sweeping grasses and coarse scrubs, all chosen for their hardiness, lightness and shallow roots — follow this rhythm. 'They're alive. They change. They move with the climate,' Lehrer said. Amazingly, the rest of the landscape is a kind of green roof as well, sitting atop a 2,400-spot underground parking structure — available to those visiting the Lucas or any of Expo Park's other institutions. Wedged between the greenery and the parking are thousands of foam blocks, mixed with soil and sculpted to form the landscape while minimizing weight on the building below. 'I wish I had invested in foam before we started this,' joked Angelo Garcia, president of Lucas Real Estate Holdings. 'It's everywhere. These mountains were created with foam.' 'It's full-scale ecology sitting on top of a structural system,' noted Michael Siegel, senior principal at Stantec, the museum's architect of record, responsible for its technical oversight and implementation. 'That's how the best storytelling works,' Lehrer added. 'You don't see the mechanics. You just feel the effect.' As you make your way through the rolling landscape, it becomes clear that it's also crafted to meld with MAD's sculptural design — a hovering, eroded form, itself inspired by the clouds, hills and other natural forms of Los Angeles. 'There's a dialogue,' Garcia said. Paths bend instead of cut; curving benches — cast in smooth, gently tapering concrete — echo the museum's fiber-reinforced cement roofline. Bridges arc gently over bioswales and berms. Ramps rise like extensions of the building's base. Paving stones reflect the color and texture of the museum's facade. 'It was never landscape next to building,' Lehrer said. 'It was building as landscape, and landscape as structure. One continuous form.' Closer to the building, where a perimeter mass damper system that the design team has nicknamed the 'moat' protects the museum from seismic activity, landscape nestles against, and seemingly under, the structure's edges, further blurring the barrier between the two. Rows of mature trees being planted now will help soften the flanks. Vines will hang from the Lucas' floating oculus, right above its entry court. The topography was designed to minimize environmental impact. Hundreds of plants, mostly native to the region, are drought-tolerant (or at least require little watering). A rain-harvesting system captures water for irrigation. And on the north edge of the museum will be 'The Rain,' a waterfall that doubles as a passive cooling system, replacing traditional air-conditioning infrastructure. (Dozens of underground geothermal wells provide additional cooling.) In this part of South L.A., park space is egregiously scarce, a remnant of redlining and disinvestment. This space — set to be open to the public without a ticket, from dawn to dusk — is a game changer, as is a massive green space on Expo Park's south side that also replaces a surface parking lot and tops an underground garage. (That latter project has been delayed until after the 2028 Olympics.) 'It's hotter, it's denser and it's long been overlooked. We wanted to change that,' Lehrer said of the area. What was once a walled-off asphalt lot is a porous public space, linking Expo Park to the rest of the neighborhood via its four east-west pathways and opening connections on the north side to Jesse Brewer Jr. Park, which the Lucas Museum has paid to upgrade. The museum also funded the creation to the south of the new Soboroff Sports Field, which replaces a field that was adjacent to the site's parking lot. The Lucas' circular plaza and amphitheater with seating for hundreds, have the potential not only to host museum events but also to become popular community gathering spots. For Lehrer, the landscape is a convergence of civic and ecological ideas that she's developed throughout her career — really ever since a chance encounter with the intricate original drawings for Central Park while she was studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design spurred her to pivot from planning to landscape architecture. At this point, she's created arguably more major new public spaces in Los Angeles than any other designer, including two vibrantly didactic landscapes at the adjacent Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, downtown's 10-acre Vista Hermosa Park and the artfully layered grounds and lake surrounding SoFi Stadium. 'This brings everything together,' she said. 'Design, ecology, storytelling, infrastructure, community. It's the fullest expression of what landscape can be.' Lehrer credits Lucas with not just permitting her to explore these ideas but encouraging her to push them further. Lucas supported the rare — and costly — installation of mature plantings. Usually the landscape is the last part of a building to emerge. The progress in the grounds is a bright spot for the museum, which has been grappling with construction delays, the surprise departure of its executive director and, most recently, the layoffs of 15 full-time and seven part-time employees, part of a restructuring that a museum official said was 'to ensure we open on time next year.' As the new building accelerates toward that opening, the vision outside is becoming more clear. 'To have an open-minded client, who gets landscape and also appreciates creativity, it's rare,' Lehrer said. Lucas, who grew up on a farm in Modesto, has been developing the vineyards, gardens and olive groves of his Skywalker Ranch in Northern California for decades. 'I have always wanted to be surrounded by trees and nature,' Lucas said. 'The museum's backyard is meant to provide a respite in a hectic world.'
Perth Now
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Prince Philip saw Bigfoot at Balmoral
Prince Philip Credit: BANG - Entertainment News BANG - Entertainment News Bang Showbiz Prince Philip once saw Bigfoot as he was out walking at Balmoral. It has been claimed that the late Duke of Edinburgh caught sight of the legendary beast when he and wife Queen Elizabeth were staying at the royal family's summer retreat in Scotland during the 1970s. Filmmaker Mark Christopher Lee said that a royal source had informed him of the mysterious sighting on the royal estate. He told the Daily Star newspaper: "I had some contact from the Palace there was some sort of Bigfoot at Balmoral that the Duke of Edinburgh saw once. "This was in the '70s." 'Flash Gordon' actor Brian Blessed previously suggested that both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were fascinated by the legend of Bigfoot. Recalling a conversation with Philip about Sasquatch, Blessed said: "Oh yes, he said it's true. It does exist. I told them that they're everywhere."
