After breaking ground in 2018, Hall H got its first look at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art before it’s set to open its futuristic doors in 2026. With a personal collection from George Lucas’s 50-year art archive, the museum is set to feature artwork and never-before-seen pieces from Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, Jessie Willcox Smith and more. The panel was moderated by Queen Latifah, with Guillermo del Toro and Doug Chiang as panelists.
It’s been a long time coming for the Lucas Museum since it was first announced. In 2016, the museum was initially set to begin construction in Chicago near Lake Michigan. After a Chicago-based organization named “Friends of the Parks” filed a lawsuit over the construction on private land, the museum selected Los Angeles as its official building site near Exposition Park.
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“I’ve been doing this for 50 years now, and then it occurred to me that I don’t know what I am going to do with [all the art] because I refuse to sell it,” Lucas said at his first San Diego Comic-Con appearance. “Art is more about an emotional connection. Not how much it cost, or what celebrity made it. If you have an emotional connection, then it’s art. I’ve worked with hundreds of illustrators in my life, and they’re all brilliant, but they don’t get recognized for anything. This museum is a temple to the people.”
The history of LucasFilm at San Diego Comic-Con has existed for over 50 years, with the first “Star Wars” having a panel during the 1976 iteration of the convention. Fans who attended the event got to see still images from “A New Hope,” where Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin discussed artwork from “Star Wars.”
“It’s one thing that this kind of art [featured] will celebrate because of science fiction. Science fiction is a myth, but we have made it real,” revealed Lucas about the museum’s science fiction artworks set to be displayed. “Humans made it real because of science fiction books and art that makes people say, ‘Oh, we could go to the moon,’ and once that idea is implemented, then we believe we could do it.”
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