George Lucas’ $1 billion museum heading to Los Angeles

Star Wars creator George Lucas will open his ambitious $1 billion Museum Of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.
The 72-year-old filmmaker has finally found a home for his passion project after experiencing several location setbacks.
After abandoning plans to build the museum in his wife Mellody Hobson’s native Chicago, Illinois last year (16), he also considered the San Francisco Bay area as a potential site, but Los Angeles has won out, and the Exposition Park neighbourhood near the director’s alma mater University of Southern California is now the official home of the Lucas MNA.
Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti couldn’t be happier about the forthcoming arrival of “a new jewel” in the metropolis, noting the museum will “soon bring unrivalled opportunities to be immersed in stories told on canvas and celluloid”.
“I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went after it with everything we have,” Garcetti said in a statement to Variety on Tuesday (10Jan17). “I know that L.A. is the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest possible audience.”
He then thanked George and his wife for choosing Los Angeles, adding, “I am deeply grateful to Mellody and George, and to our educational, governmental, and cultural leaders for their extraordinary support in helping us bring the museum home. Now it’s time to build the vision.”
Lucas is expected to provide the majority of the funds to build his museum, which will house the Star Wars director’s massive art and film memorabilia collection.