The Lucas Museum (Photo by Chris DELMAS / AFP via Getty Images)
ALMOST A DECADE AGO, Star Wars director George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, stood at the podium in the ornate chambers of the Los Angeles City Council and made a public pledge. The museum they proposed to build on public land in Exposition Park — the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — would be “not just a museum,” as Hobson said. It would be an institution singularly focused on learning. Education, the museum’s then-president, Don Bacigalupi, proclaimed at that same meeting, “will be core to everything we do.”
To begin construction, the Lucas needed the approval of the City Council, and the museum leaders’ promise was met with civic glee. Councilman Curren D. Price, in whose district the museum resides, hailed “improved access to education for our local youth.” Paul Koretz asked Bacigalupi whether the museum would feature anything from “a galaxy far, far away.” And Herb Wesson encouraged everyone to “applaud for the heck of it.”
But now, nearly two months after the Lucas opened to nationwide fanfare, those education opportunities are nowhere in evidence.
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