The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is equally ambitious with 35 galleries expanded across 300,000 square feet. Set to open this September in Exposition Park, George Lucas’ long-delayed project will finally realize a vision first proposed more than 15 years ago. Supply chain issues, design conflicts, and leadership departures contributed to two postponements from its original 2021 opening. More than 40,000 works ranging from murals and comic art to movie posters and popular illustrations will soon be on view to the public. Select objects from Lucas’ filmmaking career such as props and costumes from the Star Wars universe will also make an appearance. Similar to the LACMA campus, the Lucas Museum includes dedicated spaces for dining, entertainment, and education.
Refik Anadol’s Dataland is set in an equally striking building designed by Frank Gehry in a downtown complex. As the first museum dedicated to AI art, it will give visitors a multisensory experience enabled by its own open source, generative AI model, Large Nature Model, which is powered by renewable energy. Anadol’s vision of “machine hallucinations” comes to life in galleries that combine the visual and the olfactory. Despite being the smallest of the three museums, Dataland poses some of the biggest questions: What role does culture play in the era of AI? Where does art end and technology begin? How can code and creativity coexist?
