WHAT’S THE STORY?
THE Force, it seems, is with Los Angeles, with San Francisco left on the Dark Side.
Star Wars creator George Lucas and his team were on the side of the City of Angels over the City by the Bay, choosing LA as the home of a museum that will showcase his life’s work alongside a huge collection of exhibits on film history and art.
After what organisers called “extensive due diligence and deliberation”, they announced that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be built in Exposition Park, where it will sit alongside the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Science Centre, which houses the space shuttle Endeavour.
Lucas is financing the project by himself and plans to spend more than $1 billion to build the museum and provide a collection of initial artworks valued at over $400 million. Together with Chinese architect Ma Yansong, Lucas has proposed a sleek, futuristic design.
It had several possible locations, but the choice eventually came down to perpetual rivals in Northern and Southern California.
San Francisco offered Treasure Island, with its scenic views in the middle of the bay, as a home that the museum would have virtually to itself.
WHAT WILL BE ON SHOW?
THE museum will house Lucas’s personal collection, which includes 40,000 paintings, illustrations and film-related items including storyboards and costumes from The Wizard Of Oz, Casablanca, and, of course, Star Wars. As well as Star Wars items like Darth Vader’s helmet, the museum will show artworks chosen from the 40,000 items in Lucas’s collection, including works by such artists as Norman Rockwell, Edgar Degas, Winslow Homer and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti emphasised that it would not be simply “a Star Wars museum”.
“This is a collection of narrative art in a city that has the best storytellers and story makers in the world,” Garcetti said at a news conference.
San Francisco mayor Edwin Lee said: “I am disappointed, of course, but must respect the decision. I am pleased that the museum will be built in California for our state’s residents to some day enjoy.”
LA seemed an obvious choice for Lucas, not merely because of its film industry legacy. He is an alumnus and major donor to the film school at the University of Southern California, which is opposite the museum site.
WHY LOS ANGELES?
LUCAS has strong ties to San Francisco and has lived in the Bay Area for most of his life, with the city home to Lucasfilm until Disney bought it in 2012.
But Garcetti said LA’s Exposition Park site would allow museum-hoppers to see movie-magic spacecraft and then walk over to see the real thing: the space shuttle.
“You can go from imagining space, to actually seeing how it got done,” the mayor said. “You can see how we are inspired by the natural world, and see how we put it on the screen.”
Exposition Park also is home to the LA Memorial Coliseum, where the USC Trojans and Los Angeles Rams play football, and an under-construction stadium for a new Major League Soccer team, LAFC.
A light railway line that opened last year connects the park with central Los Angeles and the beaches to the west.
The project also comes amid a museum boom in Los Angeles which includes The Broad, a buzzing new contemporary art museum in the city centre.
And it makes Southern California the definitive home base of the Star Wars galaxy, with Disney having bought the rights to the franchise and now building a Star Wars-themed land within its Magic Kingdom in Anaheim.
Lucas made the first Star Wars film in 1977 and sold the franchise to Walt Disney in 2012 for $4bn.
HOW LONG HAS THE MUSEUM BEEN IN THE PIPELINE?
LUCAS first pitched his project to San Francisco in 2010 and considered a site in the Presidio, but the trust which oversaw the park ultimately rebuffed him. He then took his project to Chicago, his wife’s hometown, but preservationists campaigned successfully to keep it off the lakefront.
Lengthy delays prompted Lucas to abandon that bid in June and change tactics.
In October, Lucas unveiled similar but competing designs for Los Angeles and San Francisco sites, turning the project into a public competition. This seems to have worked, and construction could begin quickly ahead of a projected 2020 finish date.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here