Lucas Update

Hunter Kerhart Architectural Photography, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, 2024

Urbanize has new construction photos of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art by Hunter Kerhart Architectural Photography. At last word (Sep. 2022), the Lucas was to open in 2025. It remains anyone's guess whether the Lucas or LACMA's David Geffen Galleries will be the first to open its doors.

Comments

L.A.'s sprawling footprint is certainly daunting for visitors wanting to see the prime art venues in one visit. They'd need a stretch of time to get anywhere.
L.A. is big, so it needs to go big, with fast, safe and affordable mass transit to all neighborhoods.
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Yevgenia Nayberg’s art card “NYC Superhero,” [link, below] features an imagined transit superhero in flight, illustrating how New York’s vast transportation system enables riders to metaphorically fly across the city.

https://twitter.com/MTAArtsDesign/status/1760776185535963450
I won't say L.A.'s light rail system always flies, but the Lucas (and Natural History Museum) are steps away from an Expo line stop, with direct service from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles.
Anonymous said…
Ma Yansong's organic-shape-on-2-pedestals design for the Lucas may end up working better than Peter Zumthor's organic-shape-on-2-pedestals design for LACMA. The more photos I've seen of Zumthor's building, which the architect has already walked away from, the more suspicious I am about how it's going to turn out.

For one thing, LACMA will have right-angle windows under a huge curving concrete overhang roof. Top heavy and clunky. As for the Lucas, it will have a continuously curved facade with a sleek lobby that contains glass-chute elevators, reminiscent of a part of the Broad. The lack of images of the interiors of the two pedestals of LACMA is due to what?

When it comes to LACMA's new windows, my hunch is some of them will have to be eventually covered up just as the open sides of the atrium area of the old Ahmanson Gallery were. Meaning forget about whether LACMA's floor space will be smaller. It certainly will have noticeably less wall space.
I think the windows side of the new LACMA presents a perfect opportunity to display decorative arts that are featured in the paintings displayed opposite.
Porcelains, Renaissance and Baroque bronze statuary, silver, books, glass, ivory, and on and on.
Anonymous said…
Besides the Getty and Norton Simon, the major LA museums are all clustered together that visitors at least have the option to knock out 4 museums one after the other. Peterson, LACMA, Academy, Tar Pits on one campus. Lucas, Natural History, CA Science Center and African American Museum at Expo.
I'm an outsider. Maybe I just think Old Getty, New Getty, Norton Simon and LACMA are galaxies apart.
Anonymous said…
I can see why the design and the architect would have appealed to George Lucas. And, to be sure, it's much better than nothing. But the design is not timeless. It is also not unique. In China, there are many buildings that look like this. It's a very popular style there.

In the end, it will be subject to the same criticism as the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA). Here is the Guardian on the OCMA building:

"Like many projects from the Morphosis stable, it has resulted in a very elaborate and expensive envelope, shouting its rollercoaster acrobatics at full volume, wrapping a sequence of interior spaces that have little to do with the performative shell. Almost a generation in the making, it feels like the final death rattle of a bygone age, the last gasp of an era preoccupied with novel form for form’s sake. Perhaps it is fitting that this flimsy, paper-thin architecture is held together with tape."

On that note, there is a report that the reason that it has taken so long to install the facade is that the panels were difficult to install and some were damaged in the installation.

--- J. Garcin