{"id":680194,"date":"2026-09-09T11:13:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/680194\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T11:13:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:13:18","slug":"the-lucas-museums-approach-to-curation-courts-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/680194\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lucas Museum’s approach to curation courts controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, with an eclectic collection of more than 40,000 works ranging from Frida Kahlo to R. Crumb, is diving headlong into one of the oldest and most fraught conversations in the art world: What belongs in an art museum?<\/p>\n

Storytelling is the guiding principle for presenting pieces that include props and costumes from \u201cStar Wars,\u201d manga, graphic novels and comic books, placed alongside established masterworks, traditional paintings and a large-scale photographic reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The museum calls it \u201cnarrative art,\u201d defined as art \u201ccreated to tell stories through images.\u201d George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, have also described their collection as \u201cthe people\u2019s art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lucas Museum is opening as other institutions question traditional art-historical categories. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art\u2019s new David Geffen Galleries organize much of the collection around oceans and the cultural exchanges they enabled, while Tate Modern has long arranged its displays thematically. The Lucas Museum pushes that approach further by making storytelling \u2014 not chronology, geography or medium \u2014 the organizing principle for an entire institution, placing illustration, comics and commercial art inside a curatorial framework.<\/p>\n

Whether that amounts to an art-world revolution is less certain. Narrative painting has always occupied museum walls, and thematic displays are increasingly common. What may be arguably new is treating the audiences for historically marginalized forms of art as central rather than peripheral.<\/p>\n

\"Children's <\/p>\n

A painting of Eloise, the titular character in a <\/b>series of children\u2019s books written in the 1950s by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight. <\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cracks in the canon began 15 or 20 years ago \u2014 the idea that there were many voices excluded in what museums were collecting,\u201d said Lucas Museum board member Laurie Norton Moffatt, who recently retired after 40 years as director and CEO of the Norman Rockwell Museum.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is about that discovery, and there is no hierarchy,\u201d said Lucas Museum CEO Tracey Bates, adding that the museum does not rank one artist above another. Indeed, the museum does not even provide wall text describing the art viewers are seeing, or in what context it matters. Nor does it tell guests where, exactly, in the 100,000 square feet of gallery space they can find particularly celebrated works of art including pieces by Artemisia Gentileschi, Ernie Barnes, Frida Kahlo and Grandma Moses.<\/p>\n

Mark Hilbert, whose 10-year-old Hilbert Museum of California Art exhibits California scene paintings, animation and illustration, predicts that the Lucas Museum will \u201cupend the art world\u201d by displaying art that \u201ctells a story.\u201d Hilbert and his late wife, Janet, had a similar motivation in starting their museum: \u201cto present art that strikes to the very deepest chords of who we are as humans\u201d \u2014 something he believes Lucas Museum is doing on a much larger scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor too many years, there\u2019s been such a push towards non-objective art,\u201d Hilbert said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re just rebalancing the scale a little bit more based upon what the population wants,\u201d he said of both museums.<\/p>\n

Not everyone sees virtue in collapsing those boundaries. Former Times art critic Christopher Knight argues that much of the imagery the museum collects belongs to a media landscape that no longer exists.<\/p>\n

\u201cMass culture and art culture are different in lots of ways, but the Lucas [Museum] seems determined to collapse those distinctions,\u201d Knight wrote in a recent email. \u201cIn the wild wake of the digital revolution, the art culture niche might be struggling, but mass culture is just about dead. The Lucas is where the bones are buried.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Star <\/p>\n

Miniatures are part of the \u201cStar Wars in Motion\u201d exhibition at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

What is <\/b>n<\/b>arrative <\/b>a<\/b>rt?<\/b><\/p>\n

According to Ryan Linkof, the museum\u2019s senior curator and head of film programs, Lucas began collecting original comic art as a college student in the 1960s, later expanding into illustration and fine art. Hobson, an established collector in her own right, helped broaden the collection\u2019s representation of Black artists. Lucas declined to be interviewed by The Times, but said in a recent interview with Vogue<\/a> that \u201cart is emotional, not intellectual,\u201d a philosophy reflected in the museum\u2019s curatorial approach.<\/p>\n

Like the Broad, the Norton Simon, Hammer and J. Paul Getty museums, the Lucas Museum is built around a founder\u2019s collection and cultural vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans have used images to tell stories, and the stories have shaped the world,\u201d said Linkof. \u201cThat\u2019s the core of what this project does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linkof does not present the approach as a sea change in curation. Its more significant departure from established norms, he said, is its sustained attention to illustrators and commercial artists, \u201cwho tended to be on the margins of, or even fully ignored by, traditional museums, art museums specifically, and the discipline of art history, which is defined around canons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two <\/p>\n

\u201cTake Your Medicine,\u201d left, and \u201cThree Boys Fishing\u201d in the Norman Rockwell gallery at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

The museum, Moffatt said, will allow visitors to encounter familiar images as original works: \u201cThey\u2019ve only seen it [them] as reproductions, and it\u2019s completely different when you stand in front of a Rockwell or a Maxfield Parrish, or see the storyboarding and art behind a film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucas also approaches illustration as integral to his own creative process, Moffatt said. \u201cThe \u2018Star Wars\u2019 films involved many, many illustrators who were involved in idea creation through imagery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illustration lost critical standing with the rise of abstraction, according to Moffatt and author Leo Braudy, professor emeritus of English and art history at USC. <\/p>\n

However, Braudy noted that \u201cnarrative art has never been excluded from museums.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has thrown [Jacques-Louis] David or Caravaggio out just because they\u2019re telling a story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nor does Braudy see an inherent conflict between the kinds of work the Lucas Museum fuses together. \u201cPopular culture \u2026 and high culture \u2026 aren\u2019t antagonistic to each other. They fit together somehow. They belong to different aspects of the same tradition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Museums, he added, are moving away from older categories that may no longer produce the insights they once did.<\/p>\n

Lucas board member and LACMA Chief Executive Michael Govan said Lucas has \u201cspecial insight\u201d into narrative art because \u201che\u2019s a human being who spent his whole life thinking about telling stories. \u2026 He\u2019s truly an expert.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Kadir <\/p>\n

Kadir Nelson\u2019s \u201cArt Connoisseurs,\u201d 2019, which the Lucas Museum acquired in 2020. <\/p>\n

(From Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles; 2019 Kadir Nelson)<\/p>\n

With 20 works in the Lucas Museum\u2019s collection, Los Angeles artist Kadir Nelson embodies the overlap between popular visual culture and fine art. His \u201cStickballers,\u201d depicting children playing stickball, shares a throughline with other artists depicting scenes of everyday life in the collection, including Ernie Barnes.<\/p>\n

Nelson said his work focuses on \u201cthe hero and the story of the hero,\u201d an approach he sees echoed in Lucas\u2019 films and curatorial strategy.<\/p>\n

Such work could enter an encyclopedic museum like LACMA, Govan said, but the Lucas Museum offers a breadth and depth not found elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is very different,\u201d Govan said of the Lucas. \u201cAnd therein lies its power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Changing the museum audience<\/b><\/p>\n

The Lucas Museum hopes comics, \u201cStar Wars\u201d and Banksy will attract people who might not otherwise visit an art museum \u2014 and introduce them to overlooked artists, as well as greats including Kahlo and Diego Rivera. (The \u201cStar Wars in Motion\u201d display is just a small part of the offerings by design, occupying only 7% of the museum\u2019s exhibition space, according to Bates.)<\/p>\n

USC media scholar Henry Jenkins, co-author of the \u201cFrames of Fandom\u201d book series, said devotees arriving in search of a \u201cStar Wars\u201d museum must be made to feel welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be bridge-building for pop culture to be integrated into the museum world,\u201d he said, calling for \u201con-the-ground community building\u201d through science-fiction programming at the museum, as well as outreach to comic book stores and universities.<\/p>\n

\"Comic <\/p>\n

Comic artwork hangs at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The museum is planning outreach to attract fans through events at comic book stores.<\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

Bates said that work is underway: Comic artists have been invited to previews, and the museum is working on a project involving comic book stores, according to a spokesman.<\/p>\n

Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who helped bring the museum to the city, said its reception among the public may ultimately matter more than acceptance within the art world, where the collection has already drawn skepticism.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of art snobs [ask], \u2018What is a narrative art museum? Is that really a category of art?\u2019 \u201d Garcetti said. \u201cI\u2019m a small-d democrat, and I think that people will vote with their feet and will embrace this museum as their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the Lucas Museum upends the art world may depend less on whether other museums adopt its philosophy than on whether audiences embrace the connections it attempts to draw. Its curatorial methods may not force a reconsideration of how to rethink a museum, but giving audiences of nontraditional forms of art the weight of an entire institution could prove more consequential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, with an eclectic collection of more than 40,000 works ranging from Frida…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[22963,595,84052,365,362,363,364,33038,287842,366,287840,18,117,287841,19,3520,17,100512,287843,203058,237,8127,1217,80],"class_list":["post-680194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-approach","tag-art","tag-art-world","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-audience","tag-comic-book","tag-design","tag-eclectic-collection","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-film-program","tag-ie","tag-illustration","tag-ireland","tag-lucas-museum","tag-moffatt","tag-narrative-art","tag-people","tag-star-wars","tag-story","tag-work"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117240791735904642","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}