Lucas Announces Opening Installations
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| George Hughes, Home at Last, 1951. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
It took 45 curators to realize the Geffen Galleries' inaugural installation. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be more of a one-man show. George Lucas is credited as curator for 20 thematic installations planned for the museum's Ma Yansong building, set to open Sep. 22. Last year museum director/CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont stepped down, followed by chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas. Those posts remain vacant.
The Lucas will be comparable in size to the Geffen, with over 1200 objects on view across 100,000 sf of exhibition space (v. 1700+ works and 110,000 sf for LACMA's new wing). No surprise: There will be a dedicated space for Star Wars and another for Norman Rockwell. Other artists and illustrators getting solo treatment are Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Frazetta, Jessie Wilcox Smith, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish.
Thematic sections will treat manga and anime; murals; documentary photography; children's stories; and Ma Yansong's architecture. Other themes veer into vague catch-alls: childhood, motherhood, school, sports, love, play, and work. At top, falling under the heading of "Family," is a painting by George Hughes for a 1951 Saturday Evening Post cover. Hughes created 112 Post covers, nearly twice as many as his Vermont neighbor and drinking buddy Norman Rockwell.
Comments
> George Hughes
At first, I assumed that was a photo. I had just zipped through the entry text (what can be said about "treacle" until it opens?!), then saw Ted G's comment. Then noticed the section of the kid sleeping in the car, which isn't as photo realistic.
Such work at least can be judged based on technical skill. A lot of newer art can't be, however. Then creative skill enters the equation. But pre-Raphealite art causes visual diabetes, whereas abstract may not.
It's interesting how the creative-technical fingerprint of, on one hand, a John Singer Sargent and, on the other hand, a Jean-Michel Basquiat (but less technical) is detectable from a distance.
The Lucas will have more on display which will require close-up viewing. Or just the opposite of what's true of most contemporary art museums. Although a lot of a Louvre or NGA will also contain works whose dimensions are over 4 feet wide, 4 feet long.
The comment about artist Diana Thater having to apologize for exhibiting at 1965-1986 LACMA reminds me of the time I heard 2 French women in the museum's bookstore (not sure what part of France they were from---assuming they weren't actually from Quebec Canada) and feeling really sheepish about the place. lol.
The NY Times writer doesn't mention what I immediately notice about the Geffen (but admittedly based on images and video): Too many blank gray concrete walls. I'd be surprised that when I'm actually there, that won't still stand out to me----assuming way more artworks aren't added in upcoming months. That tentativeness in 2026 seems like a variation of LACMA 1965.
Pereira over 60 years ago got the ball rolling in the wrong direction. Jori Finkel alludes to that when she mentions how LACMA's attendance has traditionally relied on locals, not out-of-towners. Which again reminds me of the time I overheard two visitors with French accents speaking at LACMA.
Thanks, William Pereira and Richard Brown!
As for Michael Govan and Peter Zumthor in 2026, I wish they had dotted all the i's, crossed all the t's. The NY Times writer does mention certain flaws in what has been done---although not my main gripe about too many blank spaces.
I wonder what time it is?
Auction Closed
January 29, 2021 11:53 AM EST
Estimate: 600,000 - 1,000,000 USD
Lot Sold: 528,200 USD (incl. buyer's premium)
QQ: Does Lucas give provenance data? Was it bought directly from Sotheby's, or through an intermediary? If the latter, adds to cost.
https://www.samfogg.com/notable-sales/
Even second-tier museums (not to mention private collections) of the US and world contain so many older objects, they show way more demand than supply.
Purely superficially (ie, the looks of a place), the galleries of older European art of a Museum of Fine Arts Houston (built year 2000) appear not all that different from galleries in major Beaux-Arts-era art museums in St Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, NYC, Kansas City (Nelson-Atkins), etc.
LACMA really has been odd man out. Mulling over that "oops!" during the past few weeks (along with a more vague sense of mediocrity going back far longer) has been like getting slugged in the face. lol.
Tthe Ahmanson Foundation pre-2020 would have been LACMA's primary purchaser of a Jorg-Ledere-type work. For over 50 years, they (and others) in LA should have been yelling at the museum for being not much better than what Las Vegas is now attempting to do. And here I thought what the late Elaine Wynn and her town over 260 miles north of LA wanted to create was quaint.
Las Vegas, meet William Pereira. William Pereira, meet Las Vegas.
> current cultural issues
> might be let down by
> the Lucus.
Scrutinizing the nature of LACMA (1965 to 2020, and even in 2026) vis-a-vie LA alone (or one local museum versus another) is one reason I didn't realize just how really inadequate various public art museums in southern California have long been.
Christopher Knight's putdown of where the Geffen Galleries building is now located ("transitioned to a de facto contemporary art museum....not a very good one") and also characterizing the Lucas as "treacle" does make me feel like G. Garcin's "rube." And, uh-huh, G. Garcin, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is one reason why I had to fully accept that reality.
The Lucas's landscaping appears to be more extensive than the Geffen's. Mainly palm trees are slotted north and south of Wilshire Blvd, while the Lucas will have less hardscape on its southern side. That's in spite of the entire site being above what I think is underground spaces for parking and perhaps non-visitor usage too.
It will be interesting if LACMA/Zumthor requires more second guessing than Lucas/Yasong. If so, LACMA 2026 is still suffering some of the disease that LACMA 1965 had.
https://unframed.lacma.org/2026/05/01/painting-lacma-david-geffen-galleries-light-shadow-and-color
I still think more of the Geffen's walls should be painted (ie, tinted), but its current installation of objects needs to go beyond the sense of, "we don't have enough stuff to display or that's worth exhibiting."