The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened with a Saturday soiree that put Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Gavin Newsom and Mark Hamill in the same room. It was a clean signal that George Lucas’s museum is pulling attention before its curatorial argument has even settled.
Saturday’s opening-night crowd ranged from Robert De Niro to Justin Trudeau, with Oprah hugging De Niro as the festivities began around sunset in the courtyard under the museum’s towering elliptical oculus. Samuel L. Jackson later settled onto a curved bench and said, “Hey, look what I did!”
Mellody Hobson at the lobby podium
Mellody Hobson gave the event its sharpest off-script line in the grand lobby: “George kept saying, ‘Will this person come? Do you think this person will come?’” She answered her own question with, “I said, ‘They will all come,’” and the guest list backed her up. Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart chatted with Spike Lee before skipping the red carpet, while Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig laughed by the entrance.
Voices of Fire, the white-robe-clad vocal collective co-founded by Pharrell Williams, performed before the remarks, and a photographed group of directors later gathered inside Skywalker Grill on the fifth floor. The lineup there included Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, Jon Favreau, Peter Jackson, Spike Lee and others, a roster that turned the night into a very public inventory of who still matters in Hollywood.
Art, access, and wall text
The opening also put the museum into a familiar argument about whether narrative art is being expanded or diluted. Critics have argued that pairing masterworks with pop culture ephemera does not work, and they have focused on a lack of context because there is almost no wall text explaining curatorial choices.
Jeff Koons, Refik Anadol, Judy Baca and Takashi Murakami were among the artists in attendance, which gave the opening a sharper edge than a simple celebrity procession. Joanne Heyler and Michael Govan were there as museum directors, but the real test now is whether the museum explains its selections as forcefully as it attracts names; without that, the debate over what gets labeled art will keep swallowing the hospitality.
