Commentary: LA’s Lucas Museum, planning to charge admission, collides with a struggling city

In a commentary published by The Art Newspaper, Jori Finkel argues that, in a city where free admission is the norm, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson’s 100,000-square-foot Lucas Museum of Narrative Art–set to open September 22 in the South Central Los Angeles–risks undermining its “people’s” mission by charging $25 adult admission and offering annual memberships from $140 to $600. While the museum will offer free admission to children, military personnel, and EBT cardholders, as well as residents in the museum’s immediate ZIP Code, Finkel notes that the admission carve outs leave large swaths of the city’s underserved communities on the outside. For a billionaire in a city of 55 billionaires charging admission and raising revenue for access seems at odds with a city where many struggle to make ends meet and where even average Angelenos are still recovering from the Covid-era economic downturn and last year’s wildfires as well as navigating ongoing economic stress and the high cost of living.