Endless Matinee at the Lucas
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| Still from Ron Mann's Comic Book Confidential, 1988 |
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has released details on its inaugural film programming. Two 299-seat theaters, named for documentarian Robert Flaherty and montage pioneer Slavko Vorkapich, will be open throughout the day, offering a curated selection of films and shorts on a continuous basis. The goal is to allow visitors to experience film much as they do the rest of the collection.
Museums have struggled to integrate film and video into their galleries. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures' "Stories of Cinema: Introduction" is a fast-paced collage of short clips of 700-some films, running 16 minutes in all. Multiple clips run simultaneously on a big screen. The Lucas design is more conventional/respectful, showing films and shorts in full. The Robert Flaherty theater will emphasize documentaries (such as Flaherty's Nanook of the North, 1922) and will include works on narrative art and artists featured in the museum's galleries. The Slavko Vorkapich theater will present early cinema, experimental film, animation, and montage (Vorkapich's specialty). Artists will span Stan Brakhage, Busby Berkeley, Oskar Fischinger, Kenneth Anger, Man Ray, Mary Ellen Bute, and Walt Disney.
The Lucas opens Sep. 22.
Comments
> in general, are more interested in
> laying their eyes on a Rembrandt
> painting at the Getty....
Annual attendance figures for museums in LA going back decades haven't been as good as museums in certain other cities are. Even more so when adjusting based on per capita. So the difference in LA/SoCal between one category compared with another may not necessarily be that large.
I recall a writer in the Bay Area,, perhaps around the 1990s, claiming that interest in the visual arts (vis-a-vie LA art museums' popularity) was lower than it could be.
However, that was before a Getty or Broad. But unlike a MOMA, entrance to 2 of LA's main art museums is free.
When MOMA enacted fairly high ticket prices in 2004, I wondered how that would affect their attendance. It generally didn't and hasn't..
.
My hunch is more tourists to LA will make an effort to visit the Lucas while bypassing places like the Geffen-ized LACMA---where some of its few Rembrandts aren't even on display.. And certainly bypass a Hammer or MOCA.
The Huntington's gate count is based on a large number of visitors going through the gardens, not the galleries. As for the Simon, its attendance is more like that of a museum located in a smaller metro area..
Even people not into art but visiting Paris will make an effort to drop by the Louvre. The Lucas, for better or worse, may be LA's version of the same thing---if only by default..
> a lot of the art in the Lucas
> Museum *is in fact*
> represented *in many*
> museums across the
> country
Maybe various natural-history or crafts-local-culture museums but not art museums per se..
However, LACMA several years ago did display a collection of movie posters donated to it. The pieces were shown on the ground floor of the old Ahmanson building near its west side entrance. That doorway was created when millions of dollars in the 2000s were spent (and regrettably wasted) on modifying the original campus.
Spaces in both the AMPAS museum and Geffen don't have room for such objects because blank walls are preferable. Although that's more a problem with the latter than the former.
Just as the display format of a Louvre, NGA or Met cannot be second guessed, the same thing applies to LACMA. Very - very - professionally managed museums tend to be that way.
I wonder if the Lucas will have a gallery (with lots of blank wall and floor space) devoted to people riding around on bicycles and skateboards?
Once the Lucas figure people are not into a watching films in museums - they'll quickly just keep one open. With YouTube, streaming and everything watchable on your handheld device, not necessary at all to have show everything in a theater environment.