ISMA RANTS: I Left a Drawing at the Lucas Museum — And It's the Best Birthday I've Ever Had

octubre 01, 2026

ISMA RANTS: I Left a Drawing at the Lucas Museum — And It's the Best Birthday I've Ever Had

By Isma | Nerdmigos

"It belongs in a museum!"

George Lucas put those words in Indiana Jones's mouth. And then he spent 17 years planning, setbacks, building, and over a billion dollars of his own money proving he meant it. 😄

Last month was my 50th birthday. And my dear friend Miriam Bautista of Choco Cosmos Games (add Guardian of the Nahual to your Steam wishlist right now!) took me to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles as a gift. 🎂🌌

I don't have the words. But I'll try.

The Art Drop

I brought something with me.

An original IAMO drawing (a cartoon portrait of George Lucas) tucked in a plastic sleeve and carried all the way from Tijuana to Exposition Park.

I left it at the Star Wars in Motion exhibit, right next to Anakin's Pod Racer from The Phantom Menace. With a note: "If you found this original piece of art at the Lucas Museum... it's yours."

I thought it was fitting. TPM means a lot to Lucas. It's his most personal film — the one the critics savaged, the one the fans turned on, the one that cost him more than we'll ever know. Leaving a portrait of the architect next to one of his most personal creations felt like the right gesture. A small gift from one artist to whoever was paying attention.

Someone took it almost immediately. We'll probably never know who. And I love that. 🌌

The Building

Before anything else: the building itself is a work of art.

Designed by Ma Yansong and inspired by a cloud, the Lucas Museum looks like a spaceship that landed in Exposition Park and decided to stay. Walking toward it for the first time felt like arriving somewhere that was always supposed to exist. In a city full of interesting architecture, this building is singular — organic, weightless, mythic in its own right. It doesn't look like it was built. It looks like it grew.

Lucas spent 17 years and over a billion dollars of his own money building it. Multiple cities. Multiple setbacks. Multiple people telling him it was impossible or unnecessary. His wife Mellody Hobson recalled suggesting they just donate the art to another museum and call it a day. Lucas looked at her and said: "I am building this museum."

Hobson described it as "the most intense version of him I had ever seen."

That stubbornness. That refusal to compromise the vision. Sound familiar?

The Star Wars in Motion Exhibit: 7% of the Museum. What a 7%.

Here's the heads-up for Star Wars fans: the Star Wars in Motion exhibit is only about 7% of the museum. Lucas himself said as much: "It's not a 'Star Wars' museum. It's a narrative art museum."

But what a 7%.

Life-size Anakin's Pod Racer from The Phantom Menace. The Coruscant chase speeders from Attack of the Clones. Luke's speeder from A New Hope. Two speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi. And a full physical recreation of Grievous's Wheel Bike that made me stop walking and just... stare.

WOW. WOW. AND WOW. 😭

The concept paintings by Ralph McQuarrie are displayed at impressive scale (my only wish: the originals instead of large digital prints — they look spectacular, but the originals would've been transcendent). And outside the building, the Slave Leia vs. Jabba statue and the Padmé vs. Nexu are breathtaking — beautiful, powerful sculptural work.

I didn't get to the two screening rooms — one showing documentaries, another showing live-action and animation shorts. Already planning my next visit.

The Crown Jewel: Lucas's Personal Collection

Here's where it gets personal for me as an artist.

Standing in front of original work by Frank Frazetta. Jack Kirby. Charles Schulz. Banksy. Picasso. Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Al Hirschfeld — the master of line art, whose caricatures I've studied for years. It was overwhelming in the best possible way.

Worth noting: some pieces in the museum are loans from collaborators and fellow collectors — Spielberg, for example, has contributed from his own Rockwell collection, and Guillermo Del Toro is a museum collaborator who has almost certainly lent from his legendary personal collection as well. This is a living institution with friends, not just a monument to one man's taste.

And then: the Rockwell collection.

The museum has an extraordinary amount of Rockwell — between Lucas's personal collection and loans from friends like Spielberg. Spielberg himself said Lucas has about three times as many Rockwell paintings as he does. The museum even commissioned a full statue recreation of Rockwell's famous self-portrait painting. It stopped me cold. My favorite piece in the entire museum. A painting of a painter — painting himself in a mirror — turned into a three-dimensional sculpture. It's exactly the kind of layered, self-referential art statement that Lucas understands intuitively.

And in the middle of all of this — three original pieces by the mighty Rafael Navarro, creator of Sonámbulo, including two original comic pages. The Lucas Museum acquired them. Bravo, Rafa. 👏

A few things I would've loved to see: the work of Spanish animator José Luis Moro would be a perfect fit here, as would animator Robert Valley. And the Star Wars concept art section would've been elevated from spectacular to transcendent with original McQuarrie, Doug Chiang, and other concept art pieces instead of the large-format digital prints. But these are wishes, not complaints.

Think Mythically: What the Critics Get Wrong

Here's where I'm going to rant a little. 😄

The art critics have decided to dismiss the Lucas Museum the same way Lucas haters dismissed Star Wars. And they sound exactly the same.

The WSJ called it "curatorial confusion between illustration and art." The Washington Post described it as "an eccentric billionaire's unchecked vanity project." ArtReview called it "a $1 billion monument to his own tastes." The LA Times dismissed "narrative art" as a "made-up category designed to lend false coherence."

Sound familiar?

"Star Wars isn't really myth — it's just sci-fi with Joseph Campbell sprinkled on top."

"The prequels are just bad filmmaking dressed up as mythology."

"Lucas never had a clear vision — he just got lucky and revised history."

Same dismissal. Same lens problem. Different subject.

Lucas haters NEED to believe that Lucas never had a clear vision for Star Wars. Because if he had a clear vision — if he consciously set about to recreate myth, as he explicitly said — then they can't freely reinterpret, deconstruct, and reinvent it. Their whole argument collapses.

Art critics NEED to believe that illustration isn't real art. Because if it is — if Frazetta and Kirby and Rockwell and Moebius belong in the same conversation as Picasso and van Gogh — then the gatekeeping they've built their careers on becomes indefensible.

Lucas said it directly: "I've spent more than 50 years collecting the work of artists who don't always get their due — illustrators, cartoonists, muralists, painters — because I believe their images are as vital as any other form of art. They deserve to be in a museum."

In Spanish we have a word for what the art world has done to these artists: ningunear. To make someone into nothing. To dismiss them as if they don't exist. Lucas built a billion-dollar institution specifically to counter that.

And the critics called it a vanity project.

The Mythic Core — Of the Museum, and of Star Wars

Here's what Lucas said about why he built the museum:

"Stories are mythology. And when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life."

And from the CBS News interview at the opening:

"Myths are things you believe, but they're not necessarily true."

"But you believe them because they're emotionally true."

There it is. The same philosophy that gave us the Force. The same philosophy behind Illud Tempus — "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." The same philosophy I've been defending in Star Wars debates for years:

Myth doesn't ask you to believe it's real. Myth asks you to live AS IF it's real.

The art critics who dismiss illustration as "not real art" are making the same mistake as the sci-fi fans who dismiss Star Wars as "not real myth." They're applying the wrong lens. They're looking for academic credentials and institutional pedigree instead of asking the only question that matters: does it create emotion? Does it make the myth real?

Lucas answered that question with the museum: "Most of the stories are myths — they're not real. But the illustrations make them real."

That's the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in one sentence. And it's also Star Wars in one sentence.

One more Lucas quote from the opening, and it's the one that gets me most:

"When you combine a powerful story with a powerful picture, those two elements create a society."

Not just entertainment. Not just art. A society. A common belief system. A group of people who share a myth and, because of it, can work together.

That's what the museum is for. That's what Star Wars was for.

And no amount of critical gatekeeping changes that.

Lucas Star Wars Is Alive — Here

No new Lucas Star Wars is being made. The mythic blueprint is in conservation mode.

But it's not gone. It's HERE. Alive. In these artifacts, these concept paintings, these life-size vehicles from the films he built from the inside out. In the Rockwell self-portrait statue. In the Frazetta originals. In the three Navarro comic pages. In the building itself — a cloud-shaped spaceship that landed in Exposition Park and decided to stay.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art isn't a shrine to George Lucas. It's a transmission station for the thing he cares about most: the idea that illustrated stories help humans understand the mysteries of life. That myths are emotionally true even when they're not literally true. That the artists who make those myths real deserve to be honored, not ninguneados.

Critics Schmitics.

Think mythically. 🌌

Happy birthday to me. And thank you, Miriam, from the bottom of my heart. 🎂🙏

Disney SW ≠ Lucas SW

Keep them separated, for the good of the Galaxy. 🌌🍿

Ismael Alejandro Moreno Ozuna (IAMO) is a cartoonist, character designer, host of Nerdmigos, a geek commentary podcast en español, and creator of the Nerdmigos webcomic. He's also the founder of Sketchbook Club Tijuana.

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