Inside the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening soon

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Star Wars” creator George Lucas called his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art a “temple to the people’s art” and a project that “almost broke my will.” Seventeen years after it was first envisioned, it will be opening to the public on Tuesday in Los Angeles.

The $1 billion institution in Exposition Park near his alma mater the University of Southern California has become a life’s work for him and his wife and co-founder, businesswoman Mellody Hobson. Its galaxies of galleries are filled almost entirely with their own collections.

The 82-year-old Lucas has a love of doing things that are supposed to be impossible. The project was first conceived for San Franciso and Chicago and reached the initial design phase in both cities before Lucas was “kicked out,” as he put it. The Los Angeles museum mixes the work of populist painters, commercial illustrators and comic artists with the kind of fine artists more associated with major museums.

Stars from Mark Hamill and Samuel L Jackson, to Francis Ford Coppola and Spike Lee, flocked to join Lucas and Hobson at the long-awaited opening night of the museum on Saturday.

Here’s a look at five things to make…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business