What's Going On at the Lucas?
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| MAD Architects, rendering of plaza, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
The Lucas Museum just laid off 15 full-time staff members for education and public programs. This comes three months after the abrupt dismissal of director Sandra Jackson-Dumont and the announcement that George Lucas himself would be taking over "content direction."
Jessica Gelt, writing in the Los Angeles Times, reports that employees were terminated in a "shocking and chaotic" scene last Thursday.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is expected to open next year and has long emphasized its educational role.
Three theories, not mutually exclusive: 1. The long-delayed museum is burning money, and even its billionaire founder is now calling for belt-tightening. 2. George just isn't into educational programs. That was Jackson-Dumont's priority, and now she's gone. 3. They're concerned that educational programs will get spun as "woke," inviting harassment from the Trump administration. They don't want to spend millions defending their tax-exempt status in court.
Any other guesses?
UPDATE: In Hyperallergic, Matt Stromberg speaks with a former Lucas Museum staffer who says that George Lucas "does not believe in museum education."
Comments
In previous exhibits of the permanent collection in the Resnick Pavilion and in renderings of the Geffen Galleries, display stands are shown as having an open, thin-legged design. Or sort of a Ikea-type look. If LACMA's galleries next year stick with that format, and all the walls have a gray-brutalist-concrete look, and the ceilings aren't exceptionally high, and there are too many windows (some of them no longer curved either) instead of serious exhibit spaces, a lack of enough square footage in the Geffen won't be the only sticking point.
I'm not as cynical about the Zumthor/Govan building as I was awhile ago, but in 2026 I also don't want to be thrown for a loop.
Given the huge fires in January and ongoing news reports of things in LA like rates of crime, homelessness, government red ink and a tanking entertainment industry, the opening of both the Geffen and Lucas next year hopefully won't be a hat trick of negative trends.
As for "shocking and chaotic," that's more likely to occur if a museum is facing issues of money and budget.
To make the presentation more respectable, the previous director probably wanted to buy more art.
Instead of spending more, Lucas decided to make himself the Director.
Wish I could say there is a silver lining, but the building is gaudy (pun not intended). What's worse is that the Hilbert Museum has already staked a claim to the genre of narrative art. Not that anyone cares much about the Hilbert Museum, but there is guilt by association.
There are alternative curatorial models that Lucas could employ --- Oldenburg's/Da Corte's Mouse Museum or even the "ensembles" at the Barnes Foundation. I do hope he pulls a rabbit out of the hat.
--- J. Garcin
> wanted to buy more art.
My sense is she was as fascinated by the political angle as she was by the artistic or creative one per se. However, a lot of the history of arts and culture has been political. But when ideology becomes as (or more) important than skill, talent and excellence per se, this may be lurking around the corner:
..."socialist realism"...prioritized
portraying idealized depictions
of communist values and workers,
often at the expense of artistic
innovation or critical expression.
What the Wende Museum specializes in is a cautionary tale. A lot of today's entertainment industry (which for various reasons is increasingly abandoning LA) is another one.
Jackson-Dumont: “I found out that if I wanted to be an activist or an impactful human being I could do it — and I did,” she explains.
Much of that dysfunction, they said, stemmed from a “core discrepancy between what George [Lucas] thinks a museum is and what the leadership thinks it is.”
^ People in the creative-cultural community, particularly in today's entertainment industry, have become more and more political. So talent-creativity-excellence are seen as less interesting than ideology. Lucas probably has observed those trends in his own former movie franchises, which during the past 10 years have increasingly gone downhill.
The mindset decades ago that led to what the Wende Museum focuses on is hovering around the edges in today's world of arts and culture.
^ About 7 years after that article's description of "conscientious effort to preserve" was published, the notorious Cultural Revolution of China would begin.