Why Narrative Art with Dr. Nenette Luarca-Shoaf
On Monday, April 15, 2024, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest co-sponsored an event with Villanova’s art history department that hosted Dr. Nenette Luarca-Shoaf, Managing Director of Learning and Engagement at the much anticipating Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Prior to taking her current position in 2020, Dr. Luarca-Shoaf worked as Adult Learning and Associate Curator of Interpretation at the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned her PhD in art history, focusing on the art and visual culture of the United States, has held fellowships at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Minnesota and curatorial and education roles in a number of museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. The event was moderated by Dr. Timothy McCall, Director of Art History at Villanova University.
Mission statements are aspirational. The Lucas Museum’s mission is no exception: “we are a museum dedicated to the art of storytelling…our work radiates to catalyze more connected and empathetic spaces. The art of storytelling connects us to shape a more just society.”[1] At last week’s event, Dr. Nenette Luarca-Shoaf presented the work that goes into constructing a museum according to this lofty mission. From the intellectual task of defining narrative art and designing exterior and interior spaces, to the work of curating art and engaging the public, the Lucas Museum seeks to expand the role of art and museums for society.
“One of my first jobs at the Lucas Museum was to define narrative art.”[2] Dr. Luarca-Shoaf described how this was more than just an academic exercise, but rather a central element in constructing the identity of this new museum. The three-paragraph definition on the museum’s website begins with story: “narratives are the stories we all live with. They inform how we view and understand the world, give shape and character to real events, imagined realities, and systems of power.”[3] The definition then lays out how stories find expression in visual art in three ways First, stories appear through the arrangement of figures internal to a piece of art. Second, stories emerge in narrative art through iconographic, or atmospheric references to the broader visual culture. Finally, the Museum’s definition of narrative art highlights the diverse viewer perspectives that “inform the meaning and significance of the narratives they convey.”[4]
Bringing viewer perspectives into the definition of art that orients this museum is just one way the Lucas Museum intends to be “people first,” to “meet people where they are (physically, intellectually, emotionally).”[5] This emphasis on inclusion is one way the Lucas Museum responds to the “a long history of institutional practice…of people not feeling like they can be in institutions.”[6] Instead, the Lucas Museum aims to be in the world, of the world, and engaged with the world, rather than merely collecting the world.
According to Dr. Luarca-Shoaf, this is a curatorial practice, as much as a geographic, architectural, and spatial practice. Showing artist renderings of the projected building, the Lucas Museum building’s 300,000 square feet is focused as much on its context geographic context in society as it is on the objects it preserves. Situated in Los Angeles’s South Central neighborhood, the museum is accessible along multiple public transit routes as well as parking areas. It is adjacent to other museums, public parks, the LA Memorial Colosseum (which will be used in the 2028 Olympics), and a preschool. The museum’s construction process is oriented by environmental sustainability, including the relocation of a parking lot underground and the planting of hundreds of trees. The building itself as well as the exterior grounds are designed to add value to the community.[7]
Similarly, the interior spaces are designed to inspire and help people feel that they “belong in our space.” Dr. Luarca-Shoaf displayed renderings of the museum’s research library. With tall glass windows extending down to the ground, the library is the most visible room to the public. The architecture is meant to invite. Unlike many museum libraries, the Lucas’s archive falls under Dr. Luarca-Shoaf’s learning and education department. The Museum’s co-founder, Melody Hobson, even “envisions the library as a place for teenagers to come after school to do their homework.” While this poses logistical challenges, for programming the space such that adult researchers and teenagers can share the space well, conceiving of a museum’s archive as a community space very much sets it apart as a new kind of museum.
Dr. Luarca-Shoaf used the art from the museum’s collection to show how the museum intends to curate a narrative toward its ultimate mission of societal justice. To begin, the museum’s definition of narrative art expands the artistic canon to the visual narratives people have been surrounded by, rather than merely ‘high’ art. Dr. Luarca-Shoaf presented the art of children’s books — “one of the first kinds of narrative art that most of us see” — early concept art for Star Wars, and commercial art.
The museum will display art from Norman Rockwell, whose work has often been written off for being too commercial and sentimental. According to Dr. Luarca-Shoaf, The Lucas Museum believes it is just because of the original, mass audience of Rockwell’s art that it should be seen and studied today. As an example of the way stories appear in art through the arrangement of figures, George Lucas — who has donated much of his Rockwell collection to the museum — sees in Rockwell a method of narrative art like a movie maker. Rockwell “cast people he knew in roles, he made set pieces, he was meticulous about every prop in his painting…often in dialogue with text, with a story.” Rather than shy away from his art for being too popular or commercial, the Lucas Museum will give people the tools to read his work for the narrative it tells, and thus help dispel the nostalgic myths of small-town community his work can invoke.[8]
To demonstrate the second-way narrative appears in art, Dr. Luarca-Shoaf again presented work by Rockwell. Rockwell visually depicted the four freedoms — freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from worship, freedom of speech — that President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed in 1941 that the US was fighting World War II to protect. Rockwell’s paintings of the Four Freedoms came out over a series of weeks in 1943. Seventy-five years later artists, Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur recreated the “four freedoms” to reflect twenty-first-century diversity. The latter artwork’s story appears in relationship to the broader visual culture that is Rockwell’s prior work. The Lucas Museum, while not depicting these precise paintings, hopes to present similar visual narratives of inclusion.[9]
One of the central goals of the Lucas Museum is to give people tools not just to appreciate narrative art, but also to critique the stories that surround us every day. According to literary critic, “how inconspicuously narrative winds around us, soft as fog, how efficiently it enables us to look, to forget to look up and ask, what is it that the story does not allow us to see?” Against the constant and overwhelming narration of corporations and politics, the Lucas Museum intends to underscore the choices narrative artists made in the past to help people see how stories shape society, create norms, and often amplify the powerful.
The museum’s co-founder, George Lucas believes in stories. He believes they connect us, that you learn about society by looking at the stories it tells, that stories are important. In presenting the mission of the museum, Lucas declares, “Narrative art tells the story of a society — most importantly, what the common beliefs are that hold it together.”[10] Thus, the Lucas Museum’s dedication to narrative art makes it an excellent space to reimagine, recreate, and expand the role of art and museums in twenty-first-century society.
[1] “About the Museum,” (The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, April 21, 2024), https://lucasmuseum.org/, https://lucasmuseum.org/museum.
[2] Unless otherwise cited, all quotes are Dr. Nenette Luarca-Shoaf from the event.
[3] “Narrative Art,” (The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, April 21, 2024), https://lucasmuseum.org/, https://lucasmuseum.org/narrative-art.
[4] “Narrative Art,” (The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, April 21, 2024), https://lucasmuseum.org/, https://lucasmuseum.org/narrative-art.
[5] “About the Museum,” (The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, April 21, 2024), https://lucasmuseum.org/, https://lucasmuseum.org/museum.
[6] Maximilíano Durón, “L.A.’s Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Is Looking to Change How a Museum Can Be Part of Society,” ARTnews.Com (blog), December 1, 2020, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-shaping-art-2021-1234577351/.
[7] For artistic renderings of the building and surrounding area see https://lucasmuseum.org/building
[8] For a historical analysis of Rockwell’s art and how the small town image he depicted was more myth than reality see Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development, Illustrated edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015), chapter 2.
[9] For Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/arts/new-york-historical-society-norman-rockwell-four-freedoms.html For Hank Willis Thomas’s and Emily Shur’s recreation see https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/lens/norman-rockwell-paintings-hank-willis-thomas-emily-schur-for-freedoms.html
[10] “Narrative Art,” (The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, April 21, 2024), https://lucasmuseum.org/, https://lucasmuseum.org/narrative-art.
[MOU1]This could use elaboration.
