Why George Lucas Had to Spend a Billion Dollars on a Museum

In 1927, one of America’s greatest illustrators, Dean Cornwell, was awarded a plum assignment to paint grand murals on the walls of the new Los Angeles Public Library.

Cornwell was in constant demand as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post and other top magazines, but he decided to put illustration aside and try something more artistically ambitious. He spent five years on the murals portraying great periods of California history.

Last month I visited the library to see those murals — huge, allegorical paintings reaching all the way up to high, vaulted ceilings.

When I arrived at the library I asked at the information desk where to find the Cornwell murals, but the woman behind the desk had never heard of them. She checked her directory and found no mention of them. She apologized, saying “I’m sorry, I’ve worked here for 20 years and I’m just not familiar with them.”

I wandered around the library looking for the murals and finally came across them myself. They were still beautiful, complex, and symbolic. I investigated and learned that the library regarded Cornwell’s 1927 murals as lacking “authenticity for today’s sensibilities.” So, the library chose to display more modern art as “a counterpoint to Cornwell’s historical representations.” The new paintings featured less impressive work by less talented artists such as the Oaxacan artist collective Tlacolulokos. Yet, the information desk had no trouble steering me to those paintings.

The following day, across town, I went to an advance preview of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, an extraordinary new museum dedicated to the art of illustration.

There on the wall, beautifully lit in a place of honor, was a major painting by Dean Cornwell.

George Lucas greeted his guests and spoke eloquently about his motives for creating a great museum dedicated to illustration:

This is trying to bring up the profile of illustrators who illustrate stories. That’s a hard thing to have people understand. They ask, “Is it fine art?”

No, it’s finer art….

This has been a pet project of mine for almost 20 years….

We want [illustrators] to get a little bit of an accolade for what they’ve contributed to society over the last many thousands of years. They’re not craftsmen, they’re artists and should be treated like artists. That’s really the bottom line of what we’ve done. This will lift the profile of a group of talented people I like to call orphaned artists….

They need to be in a museum….

Almost every artist says, “what I really wanted in life was to be able to be in a museum.” That’s sad, because they deserve to be in a museum. They deserve to be in all the big museums.

I think the whole world should celebrate them, and that’s why we’re here.

Lucas had previously donated to a number of smaller arts organizations, but he felt this message required a major commitment, so he selected a world-famous architect, Ma Yansong, and spent a billion dollars building a museum to make a major statement.

Many people feel that contemporary art, dominated by urban art galleries and wealthy collectors, gains prominence by being presented in prestigious museums with marble walls and velvet curtains. It now dominates the standards for artistic quality, while representational art that conveys stories came to be regarded as old fashioned and unsuitable for elite museums. Sometimes even public libraries take it for granted.

During the 20^th century, narrative art has appeared mostly in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post. This platform was inexpensive and mass reproduced, but narrative art had a larger audience than almost any of the 20^th century “fine art” appearing in museums. The Lucas Museum takes some of the greatest Norman Rockwell paintings that were reproduced on Post covers — big, brilliant oil paintings on canvas that were previously known to the public only as printed covers — and displays them in a setting worthy of Picasso and Matisse.

If the Lucas Museum is successful in its mission, perhaps the Los Angeles Public Library down the street will wake up and begin to appreciate the value of its own Dean Cornwell paintings.