George Lucas: Just Let Me Build My Museum Already

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By Chris Taylor2013-09-30 22:23:06 UTC

He may have retired and sold his Star Wars franchise nearly a year ago, but George Lucas isn't done building his legacy yet. In fact, the most lasting part may be yet to come.

Lucas has been planning for years to build a Cultural Arts Museum, celebrating CGI and other digital arts alongside the storytelling paintings he's collected over his career (Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, et al.). He says the museum was part of the deal when he moved Lucasfilm into the Presidio, San Francisco's national park, in 2005.

See also: Exclusive Video: George Lucas Explains His Museum

But the Presidio Trust remembered differently, instituting a contest for museum proposals earlier this year — and now Lucas finds himself in competition with two other bidders, including the organization that runs the Presidio park itself. So the billionaire came out swinging in a New York Times article two weeks ago.

In a combative interview, he derided the other proposals as a "jar of jargon," claimed that the Presidio Trust "hates us", and insisting he was prepared to take the museum to his new second home, Chicago. Given that it would take at least three years to build a museum, the 69-year-old Lucas is clearly impatient to get going.

Then last week, the normally shy Lucas made a surprise last-minute appearance at a Presidio Trust meeting to discuss the proposals. Check out what he had to say in the video below, exclusive to Mashable:

Note Lucas' main selling point: CGI needs a museum, and it's a hometown phenomenon. "Basically it's like saying watercolors or oil painting were invented here," he said. To drive the point home, Lucas brought his friend, Disney and Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter:

In the Q&A period afterwards, Lucas apologized for exactly one word in his Times interview. "I used a bad word; I should never have said 'hate'," he said. "I tell my kids about this all the time." (Yoda, of course, could have told him: "hate leads to suffering.")

That left intact his implied threat to move the museum to Chicago; it also left in place his derision at the other proposals. But Lucas tried to end the night on a positive note: "I'm hoping the medium of digital art will blossom in this country, primarily as a result of the museum," he said. "I hope young people will come in and see all the design work that goes into a movie, and that it sparks their imagination to go out and do all kinds of things they weren't inspired to before."

Should Lucas get his wish — and is he going about it the right way? Would you visit a museum devoted to the digital arts? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Lucas Cultural Arts Museum

Topics: Disney Pixar, Entertainment, Film, George Lucas, john lasseter, U.S.