Remember Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, when we placed fourth behind Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, and Tokyo?
1.
He left his heart in San Francisco.
Well, yes, there are reportedly more than 50 Norman Rockwell paintings. That potentially leaves about 499,950 plastic light sabers and Yoda mugs.
2.
We have no idea what’s in his collection of a half-million objects.
3.
No one’s told us what would make the Lucas museum a worthy peer to the world-class institutions that would be its siblings on the museum campus.
Here’s the bigger issue: It’s not a huge journey from Rockwell, Wyeth, and Parrish to comic art and children’s book illustrations. That’s a trip that might be handled nicely in a dedicated gallery or wing of an existing museum. Ditto for exhibitions of fashion, cinematic art, and the still-evolving (read: soon-to-be-dated) field of digital art.
4.
It’s a big step down the slippery slope from vanity naming rights to vanity institutions.
5.
Lucas could just buy a nice piece of land here to put the museum on.
And then we’d know he really likes our city.
