Latest news with #LucasMuseum
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
As George Lucas's ‘Starship' Museum Nears Landing, He Takes the Controls
After years of delays, the mammoth Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is finally approaching completion in Exposition Park in Los Angeles. Despite its looming presence, though, the museum being built by George Lucas, creator of the 'Star Wars' franchise, has long seemed to lack the sort of defining mission that would protect it from being dismissed as a vanity project. What is a museum of narrative art? And why is Lucas building one? Even now — 15 years since Lucas first proposed a museum, and eight years after ground was broken in Los Angeles — many questions remain about an ambitious but somewhat amorphous project that is now slated to be completed next year. There has also been turbulence as the museum nears its final approach. In recent weeks the museum has parted ways with its director and chief executive of the past five years and eliminated 15 full-time positions and seven part-time employees, including much of the education department. Lucas is now back in the director's chair, installing himself as the head of 'content direction' and naming Jim Gianopulos, a former movie studio executive and Lucas Museum trustee, as interim chief executive. Its former director, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, had been hired five years ago from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her outsider's eye and knowledge of the museum world had been expected to broaden the raison d'être for the institution so that it would do more than serve as a monument to things that Lucas has collected or produced. But as of April 1, Jackson-Dumont departed in a move that was framed as a resignation. The museum's website describes its mission as exploring 'how narrative art influences societies — shaping beliefs, communicating values, inspiring imagination, and creating communities.' But some cultural leaders say that art that tells stories is ubiquitous, and can take just about any form, from hieroglyphics to comic strips to movies. 'They need to script a vision for this museum and how this moves forward,' said Richard Koshalek, the former longtime director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. 'And then they're going to have to find the right leadership to do it.' Jackson-Dumont's exit has been the most prominent among several other senior leadership departures over the last year — only some of whom have been replaced — including the chief financial officer, the general counsel, the head of development, the director of exhibitions as well as the heads of information technology, security and education. Among the employees cut this month were Regan Pro, the deputy director of public programs and social impact, and Bernardo Rondeau, the curator of film programs, who in 2023 left his position as senior director of film programs for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures to take the job. 'We have evaluated our current organizational structure and determined that changes were needed,' the museum said through a spokeswoman. 'It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum's teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public.' This generalized explanation for the layoffs is in keeping with a close-to-the-vest approach that the institution has long taken with details about the project. Lucas and his wife, the business executive Mellody Hobson — who with Lucas serves as co-chair of the museum's board — have consistently declined to discuss plans for the museum's content in concrete detail. Staff members are required to sign nondisclosure agreements upon hiring, so those who agreed to be interviewed did so on condition of anonymity. The museum recently said it could not give figures for the size of its staff or its projected operating budget. 'As the museum is now in the process of moving from completion of construction to implementation of exhibitions and opening to visitors,' the museum spokeswoman said in an email, 'both the staffing and operating budget are currently in transition and can better be addressed as we conclude our pending budgeting process.' From the start, the spaceship-style building on an 11-acre landscaped campus, has been plagued by construction delays. The curvilinear structure itself — which was first proposed for San Francisco and then Chicago before landing in Exposition Park — has been complicated by the pandemic. Problems have included supply-chain issues, design changes and conflicts between the architect (Ma Yansong of MAD Architects with Stantec as executive architect) and the general contractor (Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company). The opening date, first set at 2021, has been pushed back twice. (The museum's spokeswoman would not reveal the current total expenditure, though it is widely believed to have exceeded $1 billion.) What has not changed is the fact that the core of the institution's collection would be items amassed by Lucas over the years. Beyond Hollywood memorabilia from his films and digital animation, his collection includes book and magazine illustrations assembled over 50 years, including those by R. Crumb and N.C. Wyeth; comic books; and Norman Rockwell's paintings — such as the artist's 1950 cover for the Saturday Evening Post, 'Shuffleton's Barbershop,' purchased from the Berkshire Museum in 2018. Under Jackson-Dumont, the museum seemed to broaden its scope with acquisitions such as Robert Colescott's 1975 painting, 'George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware River: Page from an American History Textbook,' a riff on Emanuel Leutze's famous 1851 original, for $15.3 million at auction in 2021, a record price for that artist. That same year, the Lucas acquired Judith Baca's monumental mural 'The History of California' (1976–84), popularly known as 'The Great Wall of Los Angeles.' Jackson-Dumont, who declined to comment, had been appointed in 2019, moving to Los Angeles for the position from the Met, where she served as chairwoman of the education department. In the statement announcing her departure, Lucas and Hobson said Jackson-Dumont had decided to 'move on' when the museum decided to split the director and chief executive role into two positions. The statement praised her 'transformative leadership' had 'helped lay the groundwork to establish the museum as a vital cultural resource for Los Angeles and a future destination for those who will visit from around the world.' Lucas and Hobson, the co-chief executive of the asset management firm Ariel Investments, declined to comment. Some of those involved in the institution's development say they believed that Jackson-Dumont came up against Lucas' role as the ultimate decision maker with a long history of creative control as well as his bottom-line, where-the-buck-stops primacy as founder and underwriter of the 300,000-square-foot museum. The filmmaker has had a hand in every detail of the museum's development, former staffers say, from architectural details to exhibition layout to wall text. Robert Storr, an art historian, critic and former dean at the Yale School of Art, said it is important for major collectors to understand the need for curatorial expertise and experience to shape exhibitions and give them scholarly context. 'If he thinks he's the single arbiter, then he's just like all these megalomaniacal patrons who think they know more than anyone they can hire,' Storr said. 'They don't have any methodology for how they talk about the evolution or digestion of ideas. It's a serious intellectual problem that's at the heart of all this.' Conscious of his age (he turned 81 on May 14) — and the escalating construction bill — Lucas is eager to get the museum finished and open, those interviewed said, seeing it as his legacy and a long-awaited chance to share his collection with the public. Lucas's holdings will technically be on loan to the museum, and 'the major majority of works from the founders' private collections will be gifted to the Lucas Museum,' said Alex Capriotti, a spokeswoman, adding that several works have already been donated — including the entirety of the Lucasfilm Archives (1971–2012). Whatever the bumps along the way, the museum is widely expected to draw large crowds when it finally opens, given its dramatic architecture, 'Star Wars' worldwide fame and Lucas's celebrity status. Guests at Lucas's splashy 80th birthday party last May at his Skywalker Ranch near San Francisco included Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Robert De Niro, Steve Martin and Alicia Keys. Paul Schimmel, who for 22 years served as chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, said that the city's museums like the Norton Simon, Huntington and Getty wouldn't exist without their founders and similarly bear their personal stamp. 'The uniqueness of each of these collections makes for something that's remarkable,' he said. 'If George Lucas needs to be the director to get this thing done, so be it.'
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How to Build a Culture
Earlier this week, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, originally expected to open in 2023, announced another delay until 2026 and confirmed it had already cut a significant portion of its full-time team. Likewise, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently laid off 29 staff amid a projected $5 million deficit. Theaters in Berkeley and Los Angeles have, in recent years, suspended seasons or warned of closure. Even the Philadelphia Orchestra has experienced ongoing difficulties since merging with its performing arts center to remain solvent in 2021. Across the country, cultural institutions are shrinking, consolidating, or disappearing. Amid this physical disappearing is also a philosophical one: Many institutions have lost clarity about whom they serve or why they exist. The League of American Orchestras offers a clear example. Over the past decade, the League has received nearly $1.2 million from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), much of it in support of initiatives centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Through programs like the Catalyst Fund, Inclusive Stages, and the League's Equity Resource Center, the League has framed DEI not as one priority among others, but as the defining lens for how orchestras should understand their purpose, their audiences, and their internal structures. Increasingly, the work of cultural institutions justifies itself through language and policy frameworks that are largely internal to the field. The link between funding and the public has frayed. Federal programs have mirrored that drift. The NEA's grant language in recent years emphasized 'capacity building,' 'access strategies,' and 'administrative equity plans.' ArtsHERE, launched in 2023, directed over $12 million toward 'equity-centered frameworks,' focused more on internal processes than public-facing work. The long-term cultural impact of these efforts remains unclear. But that approach is now being reassessed. Whether or not the Trump administration succeeds in eliminating the NEA and other cultural agencies, the programs funded via these agencies are no longer assumed to reflect the public interest. For the first time in years, there is an opening to reconsider how public funding in the arts should be used and what it should be used for. Some ventures already point the way. The Lamp, founded in 2020, is a journal of Catholic arts and letters supported by a small team and the Catholic University of America. It has built a national readership through editorial seriousness and clarity of purpose. Wiseblood Books, founded in 2013, is a small Southern press publishing fiction, poetry, and monographs grounded in craft and moral imagination. Both have earned attention through focus and substance, despite working with limited resources. They show what becomes possible when good work is pursued steadily and with conviction. Yet efforts like these remain rare. One way to replicate these efforts would be for the NEA to create its own cultural accelerator—a short-term program focused on helping serious new institutions take root. The model exists in other fields. Y Combinator, one of the best-known startup incubators, has launched companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe by offering early-stage ventures structure, mentorship, and a public debut. The goal is to help founders establish the conditions for something lasting. Such a model could serve the arts. Each year, a small cohort of groups could be selected based on artistic merit, public purpose, and clarity of vision. These might include a regional theater company, a music ensemble, a press, or a journal of letters and criticism. Participants would receive direct support for legal incorporation, fiscal sponsorship, board development, and strategic planning. They would also receive modest seed funding to design their first season, publication cycle, or exhibition. Finally, each group would be formally launched in partnership with a national institution, giving them public validation and immediate reach. These public partnerships would be particularly critical, as they would give new ventures a clear point of entry into cultural life. A chamber ensemble might debut at the Kennedy Center. A press could collaborate with the Library of Congress to republish forgotten works. A community archive might curate an exhibition with the American Folklife Center. These affiliations would not guarantee success, but they would offer visibility, legitimacy, and an audience. Most early-stage institutions never get that chance. Making their work visible from the start would raise expectations and the stakes. This kind of support would fill a gap in the NEA's current structure. Most of its funding supports specific projects—performances, exhibitions, research, or short-term community engagements—not the formation of institutions. Rather than steering artistic content or reinforcing messaging, the NEA would identify promising founders, coordinate institutional partners, and provide structural tools for early success. The goal would equip serious efforts to begin well—and let the venture do the work of growing well. Such a program would raise familiar questions. What happens if a group draws criticism? What if leadership changes shift priorities? Those are valid questions, but those risks are already part of every public arts program. What matters is whether judgment is applied with seriousness and tied to some shared understanding of the public good. This kind of work has a foundation. The English philosopher and critic Roger Scruton wrote that beauty is a value to be pursued for its own sake. It draws us out of ourselves and teaches us to care for what we inherit and what we make. Beauty invites memory, responsibility, and the desire to preserve. Public arts funding should support work shaped with that kind of intention—not because it looks a certain way, but because it reaches toward permanence. This vision is not theoretical. By the end of the decade, new institutions could be thriving across the country. A sacred music ensemble in Ohio might perform monthly in historic churches. A regional press could republish forgotten authors and release new fiction set in or inspired by local towns. A theater company might stage both contemporary and classic works for local audiences and schools. These groups would be independent and public-serving. We know this is possible. In Los Angeles, choreographer Lincoln Jones built American Contemporary Ballet from the ground up. Without public funding or institutional backing, he created a company defined by musical integrity, formal precision, and belief in the continuing relevance of classical ballet. Today, it performs both original and canonical works to full houses. His success is not common, but it is instructive. A cultural accelerator would not replace such work. It would give more artists the tools to follow through on what they are already building. The point of such a proposal is to build institutions that carry meaning and serve the public. It is to restore the idea that art is not just for the moment, but for memory. And it is to remind us that culture is not something we inherit intact or outsource. It is something we build—deliberately, carefully—with the courage to create what deserves to endure.
Fast Company
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
Ma Yansong's first museum in Europe is a ‘metaphor' for migration
BY Ma Yansong is gesturing at a spiraling staircase inside the atrium of a building. The founder of MAD Architects —the Chinese firm behind the soon-to-open Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles—is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to inaugurate the opening of his first museum in Europe, and he is talking about movement. Of forms, yes, but mostly of people. The museum, called Fenix, sits on the edge of Rotterdam's historic port, which was also the first Chinatown in continental Europe. It was here, from the banks of the River Maas, where millions of emigrants—Albert Einstein included—boarded ships toward North America in search of better opportunities. And it is here, in the building that once housed the world's largest harbor storage warehouse for the Holland America Line, that Yansong has come to reflect on the meaning of migration. Bureau Polderman. MAD's tangled staircase connects both floors, then swoops out through the roof into a panoramic platform that offers sprawling views of the city. 'I think it's an architectural element, but it's also a metaphor; it has a storytelling function,' Yansong says. 'It's not about numbers' Fenix is opening at a time in which migrants around the world are being vilified, humiliated, deported. The EU has been hardening its migration policy for years, and hard-right parties are fast gaining ground —in the Netherlands as well. Since President Donald Trump took office, he has shifted nearly every aspect of U.S immigration policy to constrict regular immigration pathways, deport primarily black and brown immigrants living in the U.S. regardless of their legal status or criminal history, and instill fear among those who remain. The final deadline for Fast Company's Brands That Matter Awards is Friday, May 30, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lucas Museum Lays Off 14% of Staff to Make 2026 Opening: ‘Changes Were Needed'
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — the still-under-construction project from George Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson — has laid off 15 full-time employees, or 14% of its staff, in effort to open as scheduled in 2026, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday. Two people familiar with museum operations who spoke to the Times anonymously, described the layoff announcement last Thursday as 'shocking and chaotic.' They were given until 2 p.m. to leave the premises and told their personal belongings would be sent to them later by courier. Seven part-time, on-call positions were also cut. Among those whose positions were eliminated was Bernardo Rondeau, who had been hired as curator of film programs and had previously been the founding director of film programs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. He posted about the news from the Cannes Film Festival, writing on LinkedIn: 'As of today, my role as Curator, Film Programs at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has been made redundant, effective immediately. I'm deeply grateful for the time I've spent there and for the many talented people I've had the privilege to work with.' He noted he'll be at the French film fest through May 22. 'As the Lucas Museum progresses as an institution from planning to implementing to opening, we have evaluated our current organizational structure and determined that changes were needed,' the Lucas Museum shared in a statement to TheWrap. 'As a result of these decisions, last week, the museum eliminated 15 full-time roles and 7 part-time on-call roles (mostly from within the Learning & Engagement and Museum Services teams) and provided severance packages to all. It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum's teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public. The museum will also continue hiring new roles in strategic operational areas in anticipation of the 2026 opening.' The statement continued: 'Education remains a central pillar of the Lucas Museum. One of the main reasons Los Angeles's Exposition Park was chosen as the location for the museum was its proximity to other museums, USC, and more than 400 schools in a five-mile radius. The importance of education for the museum can be seen by the educational spaces baked into the museum's design from the beginning, including 10 large classroom spaces, a vast library, and two state-of-the-art theaters. Educational program plans are still in development, and we look forward to sharing more closer to opening.' The museum first broke ground in Exposition Park in 2018. Supply-chain issues during the pandemic moved the originally planned opening from 2023 to 2025. In December, the opening date was moved once again to 2026. The layoffs come after the April departure of the museum's director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who had spearheaded the project for five years. According to the Times, Lucas 'did not seem engaged' in the education and public programming that Jackson-Dumont had planned. When her exit was announced in February, the museum released a statement saying that her role would be split into two positions, with Lucas responsible for content direction and Jim Gianopulos, former chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, stepping in as the interim CEO, in addition to an ongoing role as 'Special Advisor to the founders.' The museum, which is part of an 11-acre campus. was designed by architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects. The main 300,000-square-foot building will feature galleries, two state-of-the-art theaters, as well as spaces for learning and engagement, dining, retail and events. The post Lucas Museum Lays Off 14% of Staff to Make 2026 Opening: 'Changes Were Needed' appeared first on TheWrap.
