LA Chosen As Home For George Lucas Museum

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com/AP) — Filmmaker George Lucas will build his Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Mayor's Office announced the decision Tuesday on its website. The museum is expected to be constructed in Exposition Park, just south of USC, where Lucas attended film school.

"I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went after it with everything we have -- because I know that L.A. is the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest possible audience," Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.

Both L.A. and San Francisco were vying for the museum. L.A. offered Lucas seven acres of land, which is currently a parking lot on Vermont Avenue. That site is nestled near the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and west of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

San Francisco was looking to build the museum on Treasure Island.

Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation SKG, will invest $1 billion into the museum.

The project will cost taxpayers nothing and create more than 1,500 construction jobs and at least 350 permanent jobs, according to the soon-to-be-built museum's website. The target date for completion of the museum is 2020.

With Chinese architect Ma Yansong, Lucas has proposed a sleek, futuristic design looks like a cross between the Guggenheim and a galactic starfighter.

An avid collector for more than 40 years, Lucas is giving the museum about 10,000 paintings and illustrations that include dozens of Norman Rockwells and works from French impressionist Edgar Degas to American contemporary artist Keith Haring. There are illustrations for classic children's books by Beatrix Potter of "Peter Rabbit" fame and Jean de Brunhoff, who created "Babar."

The museum gets its pick from some 30,000 film-related pieces, including storyboards and costumes from "The Wizard of Oz," "Casablanca," and, naturally, "Star Wars."

There's art from comic books, graphic novels and other popular works that Lucas hopes will attract people who don't typically visit museums.

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