Inside George Lucas’s hangar

Los Angeles. That 2012 video, in which George Lucas is seen signing the contract selling his most famous creation, “Star Wars”, to Disney for over 4 billion dollars, went viral and was frequently shared on social media. “You can see the moment when, straight afterwards, he regrets it,” users and meme creators say, analysing the body language of the then 68-year-old director. The most predatory entertainment corporation immediately turned Star Wars into a franchise with countless spin-offs, Netflix adaptations and rollercoaster rides. And Lucas found himself with a bulging bank balance, allowing him to devote himself to his family and his museum. What else could he leave to the world—apart from characters like Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones and Princess Leia—other than a building, an institution, bearing his name? The project was fraught with difficulties. Initially, it was to be built in San Francisco, but the plan fell through because it encroached on protected green spaces in the Presidio, beneath the Golden Gate Bridge; then in Chicago, on the waterfront, but a park conservation group blocked it with a lawsuit. So where else to go to build a gigantic vanity project if not Los Angeles, the city where the first of Gregory the Great’s list of sins – vainglory – reigns supreme, vying for primacy with superficiality.

Covid delayed everything, but the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art finally opened its doors this autumn. A massive spaceship in Exposition Park, somewhat of a sci-fi version – and even sleeker and less obtrusive on the skyline – of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne. The architect is Ma Yansong, who has designed a great many projects in China and also has a studio in Rome. Space-age lifts, a cinema and long corridors, and even a Starbucks – which always comes in handy for a refreshment break when the guides advise you to allow at least five or six hours to cover the 28,000 square metres.

His vast personal collection of paintings is astonishing, organised into quintessentially American themes – Westerns, Norman Rockwell… – alongside an impressive collection of comic strips, ranging from Tintin and Hugo Pratt to Carl Barks and Sendak, and even Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo. Numerous scenes depict 1950s American life in diners and barbershops, evoking a strong sense of post-war nostalgia. Lucas’s hoarding resembles that of Berlusconi, when ‘Il Cavaliere’ would ring up TV channels in the dead of night to buy up third-rate artists’ works, which then ended up in a massive hangar. Lucas has turned that hangar into a museum by throwing everything inside with little – again, very American – hierarchy among the works. If you’ve got the space, hang them all up. Paying visitors wander about in vintage T-shirts featuring Anakin Skywalker and Yoda’s quotes, expecting a celebration of Star Wars, but having sold everything to Disney, very little remains, even in the gift shop (where there’s always a queue). Just a few prop vehicles and some costumes—which he kept from the films—are displayed on poorly made mannequins for visitors to have their photos taken with. It is estimated that only 7 per cent of the museum is dedicated to Star Wars. Even of Indiana Jones—sold off as part of the package to the mouse in Burbank—all that remains is a bronze statue, almost a memorial.

However, the most remarkable feature is the ground-floor exhibition that explains to Americans what narrative art is – that is, art that tells stories, and thus art itself. It begins with a reconstruction of the Lascaux caves, followed by all the most famous paintings and artefacts, the Old Masters projected onto screens, the Sistine Chapel and the Code of Hammurabi: a concentrated selection of the best of civilisation, a 3D secondary school textbook. All fake, amidst something real. Some have suggested that such venues offer a potential remedy for overtourism, allowing visitors to examine pieces from the Louvre and the Vatican, or to zoom in on details of Trajan’s Column, without the need to board a plane or navigate the crowds at Ponte Sant’Angelo.