Chapter 3 (Part 5): The Lucas Cultural Arts Museum

“I thought a museum was a concept that people already bought into about 200 years ago. They’re having us do as much work as we can hoping that we will give up. […] They hate us.” – George Lucas

Like the Fishers, filmmaker George Lucas wanted to build a museum in San Francisco’s Presidio. Lucas wanted to bring his Lucas Cultural Arts Museum to Crissy Field – a beach-front portion of the Presidio National Park with killer views of the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and the Bay. Lucas must be reading Eli Broad’s museum-building playbook: After Lucas’s proposal was rejected he threatened to take his museum and collection to another city. Will billionaire Lucas get what he wants by leveraging cities against one another? Remember those sweet deals Santa Monica and Beverly Hills offered Eli Broad when he was “considering” them instead of Downtown for his museum? We know how that turned out.

Lucas with Rockwell’s “Shadow Artist.”

Lucas was making plans for his museum in 2009, but didn’t make a formal proposal until the Presidio Trust, which oversees and maintains the Presidio, sent out an RFP for the Crissy Field location. By March of 2013 16 proposals had been submitted, and by September those had been narrowed to three including Lucas’s museum. Lucas’s proposal was for a new Beaux-Arts-style museum to house his collections of illustration (lot of Norman Rockwell) and film ephemera (heard of Star Wars?). Lucas was willing to spend $700million: $300M for construction and $400M to endow it–he was good for it too, having sold the Star Wars franchise and Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for $4.05 BILLION dollars…

Chupícuaro “Large Figurine” Type

Barbier-Mueller Collection at Sotheby’s Paris

In March, Sotheby’s held an auction in Paris of the Barbier-Mueller collection that was a flop.  Gleeful announcements of new auction records and shattered high estimates have become customary in the high end art market; so what went wrong in this case?  The Barbier-Mueller trove of Pre-Columbian art was created over two generations, was widely-published, and had been on public display at the Barbier-Mueller Museum of Pre-Columbian Art in Barcelona.  When an arrangement with the Spanish Government to put the collection on permanent display fell through,[i] the owner, Jean Paul Barbier, decided to sell.

“Grande Vénus Callipyge” at a preview in London.

The two-day auction brought in $13,375,000—a pittance compared to the $19-24 million estimate—and fewer than half of the 313 lots found buyers.  The PR spin-doctors of Sotheby’s focused on the fact that the sale had set a new record for Pre-Columbian Art.  In the post-sale press release,[ii] president of Sotheby’s France, Guillaume Cerutti, said:  “Despite having achieved less than expected, these results are good considering the context in which the sale unfolded.”

Introduction (Part 2): The Veil, the Vault and the Avenue

“The museum’s ‘veil’ lifts at its corners, welcoming visitors in.”[i]
– Elizabeth Diller, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, architects, The Broad

Conceptual Rendering of the “Veil and the Vault” by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

The new, $100 million museum will be called The Broad, after its founder, local philanthropist Eli Broad.  The sure-to-be-iconic building houses 50,000 square feet of exhibition and storage space for the Broad collections, and is designed by world-renowned architecture firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro.  It will be located on Grand Avenue in downtown, and will sit directly across from both Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).  It is a testament to Broad’s generosity and also to his ability to negotiate a public-private project.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock

LACMA

Last week, I attended (a portion) of LACMA’s 24-hour screening of the museum’s newly-acquired The Clock by Christian Marclay.  I watched the video work from 8:00 until a little after midnight, and LACMA’s Bing Theater was packed the entire time.  People shuffled out at the bottom of each hour, allowing more people in.  When I left at 12:15, there was still a line of eager museum visitors all the way down the side of the Art of the Americas building.  The Clock has been on view pretty much from the time it was acquired back in May, and just closed this past weekend.  If you didn’t get the opportunity to see it, fear not, I’m sure it will be back—it’s a huge crowd pleaser.

The (de)evolution of the leading lady?

The showing attracted a mixed bag of attendees; The Clock is more fun to watch in a diverse group of people.  Older viewers recognized clips I didn’t; there were big laughs for a dinner scene from The Odd Couple, and more laughs for a Vincent Price clip.  I held my own when I recognized a young Catherine Deneuve, a pivotal scene from Hitchcock’s Rope, and Dustin Hoffman in drag in Tootsie.  The oldtimers were stumped by a clip from Sex and the City.  Some clips I wanted to go on longer, but I quickly forgot about them because there were five or more news clips in the next minute.

Summer Exhibitions

LACMA

LACMA’s near acre of new exhibition space, the Resnick Pavilion, means LACMA has a lot of exhibitions to program.  And they seem up to the task.  After the three inaugural shows (Olmec, Fashion, and Eye for the Sensual), LACMA has managed to keep the Resnick Pavilion at full capacity.  There are three shows currently in the space: David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy, Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts, and LACMA’s ticketed blockbuster: Tim Burton.  The shows keep with Michael Govan’s strategy for offering unrelated coinciding shows in the Resnick Pavilion.

Across from the Resnick Pavilion, is Renzo Piano’s other LACMA building, BCAM; it too has been kept full. The top floor is still stocked with Broadworks, the second floor is being deinstalled from the recent permanent collection show Human Nature, and the ground floor just had one of the massive Serra sculptures deinstalled, to make room for a new Burden work, which is going to be AWESOME.