LACMA's Art + Film Gala honors Mark Bradford and George Lucas
Social justice was a theme right from the onset at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s gala Saturday night honoring artist Mark Bradford and filmmaker George Lucas.
It started at the cocktail hour. On one side of the red carpet, guests filed in to a manicured garden area lined with rosebushes, their gowns sweeping the velvety grass and their silhouettes awash in the glow from part of artist Robert Irwin’s “Primal Palm Garden.” Waiters served trays of pink champagne. On the other side of the red carpet, across 6th Street, protesters representing UCLA workers marched up and down the sidewalk.
The social justice spirit was most evident, however, in the selection of the annual Art + Film Gala’s honorees. Bradford’s work addresses a range of sociopolitical issues as well as art history. Lucas’ Museum of Narrative Art, set to break ground in Exposition Park in January, he said, promises to bring jobs to the area and make art accessible to young people of diverse backgrounds.
“The secret,” Lucas said during the cocktail party, “is you gotta give kids inspiration and make them realize they can have a world that isn’t the one that they know, which is pretty narrow, but one that they can expand and fantasize and imagine — which is kinda what I did with ‘Star Wars.’ And it opens their minds up.”