“[George Lucas] was honored alongside Mark Bradford at LACMA’s Art+Film, the 7th annual gala that raised $4.4 million and hosted Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Kim Kardashian.
…Lucas spent the bulk of his acceptance speech sharing why he has been called to form his own museum, The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. And it wasn’t all positive. He noted the man rejections after having been turned down by cities including San Francisco and Chicago before landing in L.A. ‘I have discovered in trying to build a museum – I’ve been working on it for 10 years and been rejected by many cities – that a lot of people don’t like museums. They don’t really think of them as anything valuable. I was shocked beyond belief.’
Less shocking is that he didn’t give up, and he said it was because of the kids. ‘Art is important to our society and our culture. It is a window into a much larger world. That’s one of the reasons I’m doing it,’ said Lucas of the museum, set to open in 2021 in Exposition Park near USC. ‘It was originally designed to inspire young people. To inspire people who live in an apartment where all they can see is a dreary street, maybe a burned down car, they know where all the drug dealers are, they go to school, sorta half a school and they think that is the world. It’s not. The secret to get out of that, I’ve learned, with ‘Star Wars’ and it actually works, if you give kids an inspiration and you say use your imagination, there’s no limits. You can imagine anything you want.’
Lucas got the loudest applause when he said that ‘all art is popular art.’ He followed it up by sharing one last piece of wisdom about life that he’s learned, and it is that true artists, like the ones he rose through the ranks alongside follow their passions not for money or ego.
‘That’s ultimately the true sign of an artist,’ he explained. ‘You do it because you have to do it. You don’t do it because you need a job or you want to prove something or you need to make money. You do it because it’s in your blood and you can’t go through life without doing it.'”
Read and see more pictures at The Hollywood Reporter.