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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday that the Lucas
Museum of Narrative Art will be located in Exposition Park in
downtown Los Angeles.
"I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went
after it with everything we have — because I know that L.A. is
the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest
possible audience," Garcetti said in a statement, thanking Lucas
and his wife, Mellody Hobson.
The museum was initially planned for Chicago, but Lucas ran into
legal challenges from an open-spaces group and pulled the
project. Garcetti immediately moved to woo the filmmaker to
house the museum in Los Angeles.
The proposed museum, valued at $1 billion and funded by Lucas,
would feature exhibitions of Lucas' collection of paintings,
illustrations and digital art from the blockbuster "Star Wars"
movie franchise he started in 1977.
"South Los Angeles's Promise Zone best positions the museum to
have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling
our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and
diverse visitorship," the museum's board of directors said in a
statement.
The proposed site for the museum is next to the University of
Southern California, where Lucas studied film and met future
collaborators including Steven Spielberg.
Lucas sold his "Star Wars" franchise to Walt Disney Co. <DIS.N>
in 2012 for $4 billion.
Disney rebooted the franchise with six new films, including a
new trilogy in the space saga commencing with 2015's "The Force
Awakens," and standalone stories such as December's "Rogue One:
A Star Wars Story."
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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