Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
From the mailbag. You can help make this proposal happen!
As the costume archivist for the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum, I am contacting you to rally your fans around George Lucas and his proposed museum in the bay area! We need your help in getting this major art institution into the Presidio site in San Francisco. We need support of all our Indiana Jones fans to make this a reality! The Lucas Cultural Arts Museum not only will house George?s extensive art collection, but will also have a permanent cinematic arts gallery which will include Indiana Jones original art, models and costumes (on a permanent basis)! Can you imagine visiting the Ark or see an original hat and whip whenever you are in town?

We need to make this happen! How do you ask? Have all your members (and family/friends, etc.) go to the Presidio Trust?s site and make a comment in LCAM?s favor. You don?t need to write a paragraph (unless you?d like), something as small as a sentence will do a world of good. In doing so, you are insuring a future for the museum and the artifacts you love to educate future generations.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Moedred said:
You can help make this proposal happen!

Or you can alternatively tell Lucas to stuff it, and take his Grand Glorious Monument to Himself to Chicago. The Presidio is public space and should remain as such; nobody goes to Crissy Field for cultcha. It's only the financially motivated that want to develop this prime piece of real estate.

If Lucas wants to build a monument to himself in Frisco -- that you have to pay to get into -- then there are several other areas he could look at; i.e., Dogpatch, Hunters Point-Bayview, Mid-Market.

Rundowns from the local rag and The New York Times can be read here and here.

If you haven't dropped in on our nascent conversation on museums, then feel free to do so. This ties in quite well with the subject.
 

InexorableTash

Active member
I'm somewhat positive on the Lucas proposal. That chunk of my back yard (almost literally) needs an overhaul and it is being worked on. I was glad to hear recently that a private donor donated millions to the NPS for developing the Presidio-Crissy Field connecting park, which would let you easily get from the Main Post (home to the Disney museum, and featured in YIJC - keeping this post on topic!) to the location under debate (currently a sporting goods store wedged in between construction sites).

Knowing that nothing is permanent, I'd rather that we take advantage of offers from folks like Lucas with a reasonably good track record and who are up-front about their motivations and putting up all the money than douchebags like Larry Ellison who got SF to fund a private boat race for the ultrarich by blatantly overselling the audience revenue.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
The local rag weighs in on Lucas' proposal.

John King said:
But one thing already is clear. The museum that George Lucas proposes to build alongside the new bluff is the wrong building for the site.

The problem isn't that the 65-foot-high structure would exceed Crissy Field's height limits or that the classical look preferred by Lucas doesn't relate to anything in the Presidio.

The problem is that the proposed building has no real connection to the remarkable landscape around it. It's a generic box gussied up with arches and domes, with no more depth than a street on a Hollywood lot.

Full article: George Lucas proposal out of place in Presidio
 

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
The Chron has some valid esthetic disagreements about what to place upon this patch of 1906 Earthquake landfill next to the highway. I really could go either way, but truthfully, isn't the neighborhood happier now that the Exploratorium visitors and school buses have been sent to the piers?
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Moedred said:
The Chron has some valid esthetic disagreements about what to place upon this patch of 1906 Earthquake landfill next to the highway. I really could go either way, but truthfully, isn't the neighborhood happier now that the Exploratorium visitors and school buses have been sent to the piers?

I'm quite certain that the Aging Frat Boys who occupy Frat Mason are ecstatic that those pesky kids are forced to pay more for less along the Embarcadero.

Where would they set up their corn-hole and beer pong tables with all those mewling brats running loose? You couldn't find "all the frat stars, especially on a Fraturday." The larger point is, of course, that the area as a whole isn't much of a neighborhood.

Anyway, as expected, the Presidio Trust kicked back all three proposals, reserving some of their more pointed criticisms for Lucas' Grand Glorious Monument to Himself.

John King said:
This was a brave move by the trust's Board of Directors, which in effect defied the best-known contender: George Lucas, who wants to build a museum devoted to his collection of popular visual art. Not only does the "Star Wars" creator have the wealth to do what he wants, he has lined up bold-face support, including Gov. Jerry Brown. He also intimates that if he doesn't get his way, he'll take his museum to Chicago instead.

Another article posits that this is a battle between old & new money.

Andrew Ross said:
It appears new-money San Franciscans don't have the sway they thought they had.

Their anointed candidate for a Presidio cultural center - George Lucas' digital arts museum - received a serious setback when it and two other proposals were put on hold last week. Worse, Lucas' proposal, backed by power broker Ron Conway and other tech heavyweights, came in for pointed criticism from the Presidio Trust Board's chairwoman, Nancy Bechtle.

This, two weeks after Conway wrote to Bechtle describing Lucas' Cultural Arts Museum - actually a house for his private art collection - as "the perfect addition to San Francisco's cityscape ... a beacon that says to the world that San Francisco is, and will remain, this country's capital of innovation."

Not only does San Francisco "deserve this museum, it demands it," Conway wrote.

John King has chimed in again with another cogent piece.

John King said:
Lucas Cultural Arts Museum carries pretentious isolation to an extreme, reached from Mason Street by several flights of steps and with no connection to the new landscapes on three sides. A new set of view corridor studies by the trust also shows that the Neo-classical structure, which exceeds the site's height limits by 20 feet, would mar views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands from the Main Post parade ground.

Do check out this link for a visual simulation for all three projects.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
The Presidio Trust has torpedoed Lucas' proposal as well as the two other contestants; an alternate site has been proposed, but no further details have been forthcoming... yet. The Trust has otherwise indicated that they won't dither for another two years in coming to some sort of a final decision.

The Local Rag said:
The clear loser in Monday's decision is Lucas. His team had waged a vigorous lobbying campaign for the site that included backing from Gov. Jerry Brown, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and, especially, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. There also was support from such cinematic heavyweights as Martin Scorsese.

"This is something that caught us completely by surprise," David Perry, a spokesman for Lucas, said of the idea that other large development sites are available within the park, a National Historic Landmark District.

"For four years, we have been told that the only site available is the Sports Basement site, and we have worked and reworked our plan to make it work," Perry said. "Now, literally in the past few hours, we hear there is an alternative site."

The filmmaker will continue to work with the trust, Perry said. "I know that they take their stewardship of the Presidio very seriously," he said.

Lucas will weigh other offers that have come his way. "A lot of other people have asked us to dance, and we will start calling them back," Perry said.

Full article: Presidio Trust Shoots Down Lucas' plan, 2 others


The working girls at the White Tiger they all know my name!

A rather longish piece from the Bay Guardian on the backstory of it all: The Presidio Strikes Back

I own Wing Kong Exchange!
Importing things from Peking province that are really strange.


A shorter piece on the Trust's most recent decision: Presidio Trust Decides on Museum Proposals

Oh no I'm not insane
I kidnap Chinese girls as soon as they get off the plane.
 

WilliamBoyd8

Active member
Why doesn't Lucas take his museum to Los Angeles?

A museum of Star Wars memorabilia and props would fit right in there.

:)
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
WilliamBoyd8 said:
Why doesn't Lucas take his museum to Los Angeles?


Because now that low-lying, blue collar city directly to the West of Frisco thinks Lucas should look at them for his Grand Glorious Monument.

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The 'Rebecca' of that Twitpic is Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland's Councilwoman-at-large. She's penned an open letter to Lucas & his functionary, David Perry, to come visit the dormant Kaiser Center and any other sites in Oakland that they feel might be worthwhile.

Full article: Oakland to George Lucas: we want your museum

This follows up the Presidio Trust's proposal last month of an alternate site right smack dab behind the Letterman Digital Arts Center that houses Industrial Light & Magic, and a stone's throw from the Walt Disney Family Museum.

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Matier & Ross said:
And while spokesman David Perry said Lucas will look at the new Presidio location, he called it "a hail Mary" on the part of the trust.

The offer of the site near the Presidio's main eastern entrance on Lombard Street is the trust's best hope of winning the museum, said Presidio sources, who spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because negotiations are continuing.

Nancy Hellman Bechtle, president of the Presidio Trust board, confirmed the general location, telling us, "We really want him to stay in the Presidio."

Three of Bechtle's board colleagues, along with trust Executive Director Craig Middleton, met with Lucas on Friday at the Letterman center to give him advance warning of this week's press conference at which officials said they had rejected his and two other proposals for the Crissy Field site.

We're told the board members assured Lucas that they would "absolutely" back building the museum at a less contentious - and more traffic-friendly - location within the 1,491-acre park.

Full article: Presidio Trust offers George Lucas another spot for museum

Nobody has yet to ask Lucas why he doesn't boot out the tenets from the Lyon Street building that have sub-leased the space from Lucas since '07, and recapitalize that space. The sub-lease violates his original agreement with the City when he was awarded the space in... '05.
 

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
Resistance Lucas has encountered at this site and Grady Ranch (no sound stages means no live action Star Wars show, kids) was partly sown at ILM in the 80's: real estate developers were the go-to villains, particularly in Spielberg productions. Kids who absorbed life lessons from Poltergeist, Goonies, Batteries Not Included and Roger Rabbit run things now.
 

WilliamBoyd8

Active member

indyclone25

Well-known member
yahoo! i'm from chicago and this is something awesome!!! it's about time we got something from star wars and indiana jones here.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Grizzlor said:
Oh well, the SF stuffed shirts blew it.

Sure, if you're keen on having Lucas' asymmetric circus tent in your backyard, you can have it. Though, it also bears a passing resemblance to an Imperial Starcruiser.

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Chicago Tribune said:
The plan represents a fumbled essay in "blob architecture," a school of design that uses computer modeling to achieve amorphous, amoebalike buildings that defy conventional, right-angled geometry. In its present state, it lacks the visual excitement of a blob masterpiece like the billowy Selfridges department store in Birmingham, England. Overly abstract and under-detailed, it looks, from some angles, like a giant lump.

Fortunately, the project is at an early, conceptual stage, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel pointedly did not embrace it Wednesday. That leaves time for rethinking the building and its surroundings. A dose of restraint is in order for this showcase shoreline site. As we know from the polarizing case of Soldier Field, one man's bold vision is another man's overwrought eyesore.



Full article here.

Official site: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

indyclone25 said:
yahoo! i'm from chicago and this is something awesome!!! it's about time we got something from star wars and indiana jones here.

Caveat emptor.
 

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...orge-lucas-museum-chicago-20150116-story.html
Maybe Los Angeles?
Last summer, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti made a vigorous push to get the "Star Wars" creator to choose L.A., but the city lost out to Chicago.
"We still have to get through some lawsuits and things in Chicago," Lucas said during a recent phone call while promoting his upcoming animated feature, Strange Magic. "Once we make it through, we'll be on our way. But it's still a possibility that Chicago will be unable to do it."
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Moedred said:

Now that Chicago has sent Lucas packing, it looks like Los Angeles and San Francisco are back at the trough.


George Lucas Museum Looks to San Francisco -- but L.A. would welcome it too

George Lucas Looking at Treasure Island as new SF site for museum

I don't care if the museum ever gets built, but a Treasure Island location could be an interesting spot. It also has the added benefit of serving as a filming location for The Last Crusade.
 

TheFedora

Active member
Pale Horse said:
lmna-la-01.jpg


Beautiful indeed. They're really trying to get L.A. cleaned up.

They've a long way to go.

Yeah, it will make that area a good museum destination as well. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles is there. Literally five minutes walk away.
 
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