Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Nestled in the vibrant Exposition Park of Los Angeles, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is set to reshape our understanding of storytelling through visual art. Co-founded by the legendary filmmaker George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum aims to be the first institution solely dedicated to exploring the meaning and impact of narrative art, reflecting the common beliefs and values that bind society together.

The museum’s construction is progressing towards a grand opening in 2026, with its innovative 300,000-square-foot building designed by renowned architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects. Its design takes inspiration from the natural world, featuring a biomorphic structure that mimics the relationship between trees and their surroundings. The bustling 11-acre campus will include lush gardens and parks designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA, infusing more than 200 trees into the landscape to create a serene gathering space for the community while promoting biodiversity.

But what truly sets the Lucas Museum apart is its ambitious collection aimed at featuring narrative art from various cultures, mediums, and historical periods. With works ranging from ancient Roman mosaics to contemporary photography, the collection invites viewers into complex dialogues about identity, society, and history. Artists like Lucas Cranach the Elder, Kerry James Marshall, and Cara Romero illustrate the extent to which art can challenge societal norms and provoke meaningful conversations.

As Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the museum’s Director and CEO, eloquently states, “Through narrative art, people from every age and background can find connections between their lives and the lives of others across eras, cultures, and regions of the globe.” This goal underscores the museum’s mission to foster inclusive dialogues and broaden the understanding between diverse communities.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art lovingly embraces visual storytelling in all its forms, from traditional paintings and sculptures to comic art and illustrations. This multifaceted approach not only honors the rich history of narrative in art but also opens doors to contemporary practices that resonate with today’s viewers.

As construction milestones are reached, including the recent installation of unique, curved panels on the museum’s façade and the introduction of iconic landscaping elements, excitement builds for the museum’s anticipated opening. The Lucas Museum stands as a beacon of creativity, connection, and inclusivity, inviting the public to delve into the powerful narratives that shape our world.

In a society where storytelling is at the heart of human experience, the Lucas Museum aims not only to showcase art but also to ignite deeper connections and provoke thought about the world we inhabit. Mark your calendars for 2026—you won’t want to miss this extraordinary addition to Los Angeles’ cultural landscape!

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Museum Link: https://lucasmuseum.org/

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The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is a remarkable addition to the vibrant cultural landscape of Los Angeles, California. Established by acclaimed filmmaker George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, the museum is poised to become a pivotal hub for visual storytelling across diverse artistic forms.

Lucas Museum

Nestled in Exposition Park, the museum features an extensive collection encompassing myriad artistic mediums. From striking paintings and evocative photography to intricate sculptures and compelling illustrations, the Lucas Museum is dedicated to celebrating the transformative power of narrative art, engaging audiences, and conveying profound messages through its exhibitions. As the museum evolves, it continues to enrich the conversation around art and storytelling, inviting visitors to experience narratives that resonate on multiple levels.

One of the standout features of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is its unwavering commitment to inclusivity and diversity. The museum aims to celebrate art from a multitude of cultures and backgrounds, giving voice to underrepresented narratives and perspectives. This focus on inclusivity is not only manifested in the museum’s eclectic collection but is also vividly reflected in its thoughtfully crafted programming and community outreach initiatives. By engaging with local communities and diverse artists, the museum fosters a rich dialogue that honors different traditions and storytelling techniques.

Designed by the acclaimed architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the museum’s stunning building is a work of art in itself. Its unique and innovative architecture seamlessly integrates with the surrounding environment, creating a harmonious space that invites visitors to immerse themselves in the diverse world of storytelling. The dynamic design features flowing forms and open spaces, allowing natural light to play a crucial role in enhancing the overall aesthetic experience. This architectural masterpiece not only serves as a physical shelter for art but also symbolizes the fluid nature of narrative.

The museum’s website, lucasmuseum.org, offers a captivating glimpse into its vision and future exhibits, generating palpable excitement among art enthusiasts and fans of George Lucas’s cinematic legacy alike. It serves as a vital platform for engaging with the museum’s mission and provides ongoing updates about various programs and events that aim to foster a sense of community and anticipation leading up to its grand opening.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art stands as a testament to the profound power of storytelling to inspire, educate, and unite people from all walks of life. It embodies George Lucas’s passion for narrative and creativity, creating a space where art can be experienced, appreciated, and understood in its many forms. The museum will not only display art but also offer educational workshops, lectures, and events that will enrich the visitor experience and promote a deeper understanding of narrative as a vital component of human experience.

As the museum prepares to open its doors, the anticipation continues to build, with Los Angeles eagerly awaiting the opportunity to explore the rich world of narrative art. The Lucas Museum promises to become a cultural landmark—an inspiring venue where imagination and creativity converge. It aims to be a place where the stories that shape our lives are not just preserved, but celebrated and explored, ensuring that the legacy of narrative art endures for generations to come.

The museum is set to open in 2025…

For more information please visit: https://lucasmuseum.org/

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Andrea Kaston Tange, Macalester College

Collectors relish so-called “hidden mother photographs” as historical oddities.

These 19th-century images contain very young children held still by half-obscured adults who crouch behind chairs or lurk at the margins of pictures, their protective arms stabilizing babies. The heads and shoulders of the adults are sometimes draped in textiles or summarily cut off, or their bodies are partially tucked behind decorative mats that frame the centered child.

The startling realization that Victorian infants were not reclining on cozy blankets but on comfortable laps fuels breathless online attention. Eager resellers of flea-market finds advertise hidden mother photographs using terms like “spooky wonderful,” “cutie creepy” and “bizarre.” Articles about them tend to imply a treasure hunt for hiddenness – for adult knees or noses, poised hands, bosoms, hat brims and skirts.

But this common framing reduces their cultural importance to sensationalism: Look at how kooky our ancestors were!

As someone who has studied the history of these photos, I find myself drawing an unlikely connection between these stiff, sepia portraits and modern candid snapshots of mischievous children delighting their adoring mothers. Both are part of the tradition of sentimental image-making that surrounds the iconic figure of mother and child.

Exposure times in 19th-century photography were very long by current standards – 20 to 60 seconds – which helps explain why trusted adults were needed to soothe infant subjects into the stillness necessary to take a portrait. But this technological limitation doesn’t explain why their mothers were half-erased from these photos, which has led scholars to argue that Victorian women were effaced by their culture, and casual viewers to assume that the photographers who produced these visual gaffes were hilariously bad at their craft.

But my research has shown that Victorian photographers were documenting children at a moment of widespread desire to focus cultural attention – and therefore camera lenses – on childhood as a precious time that ought to be protected. And the partial obfuscation of mothers was not inconsistent with images of beloved children, because to cherish is to hold.

These are, in short, images of care.

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Evolving photographic forms

Photography was a new technology in the 19th century. Early photographers coated thin metal plates with light-sensitive material, exposed them behind the camera’s lens and developed the plates through precise chemical processes. Each exposure yielded a unique and unreproducible picture directly on the metal.

The fragile daguerreotypes of the early 1840s launched a period of constant experimentation. Photographers eventually perfected sturdier tintypes – also unreproducible images on metal plates – and later revolutionized the medium with glass negatives that enabled multiple prints of the same image. These prints required special paper made light sensitive with a coating of ammonium chloride stabilized in albumen, or egg white. With this process, photography became widely viable as a profession, a hobby and an art. In the 1880s, at the height of its production, the Dresden Albumenizing Company required 60,000 eggs a day to meet worldwide demand for its high-quality photographic paper.

Comparing an 1860s tintype with an 1890s gelatin silver studio print shows the evolution of photographic processes.

The studio portrait is characterized by crisp focus, strong contrast between lights and darks, beautiful mid-tones to contour the baby’s cheek, and artful studio lighting to capture alert infant eyes and the gleam of a mother’s cuff button. The tintype is its opposite in every aspect: Its flattened quality and narrower tonal range are hallmarks of this less technically advanced photographic process.

But in both portraits, the sturdy hands of the loving mother stabilize the child.

Picturing tender connections

Scholars don’t know who was first to use the term hidden mother, although some think it emerged around 2008. A photography exhibit at the Venice Biennale by Linda Fregni Nagler and a lyric photo essay by Laura Larson, both published in 2013 and titled “Hidden Mother,” cemented the moniker, which ironically erases the children who are the focal point of these portraits.

One baby picture in particular – a tintype from the 1850s – tells a story about the development of photographic technology and its role in documenting the fleeting, tender moments of childhood.

The baby’s softness is enhanced by comparison with her mother’s strong jawline. The child’s contemplative gaze suggests deep comfort, snuggled as she is against her mother’s side. The contrast between soft and sharp focus is not just one of emotion but the effect of the little one’s slight movement during the necessarily long exposure time.

The baby’s placidity is partly attributable to the presence of a third figure in this photo. This child appears to be a twin: One of her tiny hands is covered protectively by another, equally small, at the end of another arm clad in an identical dress with braided trim. Grounded in their mother’s lap, these babies exist in a triangulated embrace that memorializes the intimacy of family connections.

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Putting the original mat, with its oval cutout, back on the photo makes the baby seem to float, removing the embraces that support her. It also suggests where the moniker for these images, hidden mother, came from. But hands, bodies and the power of touch are central to such images.

Valuing the mother-child bond

Modern viewers often assume that 19th-century customs consigned mothering to the margins. But I argue that this is a projection of ahistorical ideas.

It is a strikingly modern tendency to celebrate women’s ability to have both children and careers, without accounting for how one person will then manage two full-time jobs. Such celebration obscures the labor and time parenting requires in favor of the platitude that if we do what we love, for those we love, it is not work.

Contemporary biases, I suggest, may hide mothers far more than did 19th-century portrait conventions. These images remind thoughtful viewers that babies are held and nursed, soothed and protected, nurtured and guided into independence not by abstract notions of being the right kind of mother, not by oddities, but by embodied human beings.

The historical phenomenon of hidden mothers might be productively renamed “cherished child photographs.” This label more accurately identifies their child subjects and centers the relationship, the cherishing, that is at their heart. It also offers a fruitful avenue for tender contemplation of mothers, children, and the myriad forms of motherwork and bodies who perform them, on Mother’s Day and beyond.

Andrea Kaston Tange, Professor of English, Macalester College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.