NHKニュースなど。我が国の代表美術品、村上隆のKo²ちゃん@ルーカス監督美術館 luca

Hollywood Gala in L.A. Fingerfood mit fettleibigen Stars mit schlechten Zähnen (aka Gebissträger), auch im Jahre 2026. Eingeladen war auch unser, von PM Takaichi auserkorene, M.t., dessen waga kuni 我が国の代表美術品、村上隆のKo²ちゃん auch demonstrativ in der Manga Abteilung der Ausstellung XX ausgestellt ist.

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Review of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (Los Angeles)
Rating: 1.5 / 5 Stars

Title: A massive, disappointing monument to George Lucas’s ego

I was incredibly excited to finally visit the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, but the actual experience was a massive disappointment. What could have been an incredible celebration of storytelling, cinema, and visual art feels instead like an overdesigned, clinical monument to George Lucas’s ego.

First, the building itself is a disaster. From the outside, it looks like a giant, metallic spaceship that crash-landed in Exposition Park. It completely clashes with the surrounding architecture and feels entirely disconnected from the neighborhood. Once you get inside, the layout is incredibly confusing and poorly optimized for crowds. The flow of the galleries makes zero logical sense, forcing visitors into narrow bottlenecks where you spend more time dodging people than looking at the exhibits.

As for the collection, it is wildly inconsistent. It feels less like a cohesive “narrative art museum” and more like an eccentric billionaire’s random garage sale. You will see a masterpiece painting hung awkwardly close to a piece of movie merchandise. The museum tries so hard to blur the lines between high art and pop culture that it ends up disrespecting both. The cinematic exhibits are particularly disappointing; they lack deep educational value or context, relying heavily on “cool factors” and nostalgia rather than teaching anything meaningful about the history of film.

To top it all off, the tickets are overpriced, the staff seemed completely overwhelmed, and the gift shop is just an aggressive cash-grab for Star Wars merchandise you can buy online for half the price. Los Angeles has some of the best museums in the world, but this one is style over substance. Save your money and go to the LACMA or the Academy Museum instead.

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How was the review, the perception of Takashi Murakami’s sculpture Miss Koko?

The critical reception and general perception of Takashi Murakami’s iconic 1997 sculpture, Miss Ko² (pronounced Miss Koko), bridges the gap between massive cultural acclaim and intense societal critique.

Featured prominently inside the dedicated Manga Zone of the newly opened Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, the towering, nearly six-foot fiberglass sculpture continues to elicit strong, layered reactions from critics and visitors alike.

The public perception of Miss Ko² is split into distinct artistic and cultural viewpoints:

1. The Art Critic Perspective: A Masterclass in “Superflat”

Among art historians and critics, Miss Ko² is widely celebrated as a groundbreaking masterpiece. It was Murakami’s very first life-size, three-dimensional sculpture, serving as the template for his revolutionary Superflat philosophy. Critics praise the work for:

Destabilizing High vs. Low Art: By modeling the sculpture after Yuka Takeuchi (a character from the fighting video game Variable Geo) and dressing her in an stylized Anna Miller’s waitress uniform, Murakami successfully forced the elite art world to acknowledge consumer culture.

A Parody of Western Influence: Critics view her blonde hair, blue eyes, and exaggerated proportions as a brilliant commentary on how American consumerism heavily saturated post-war Japanese media and ideals of beauty.

2. The Cultural & Societal Critique: Unmasking Fetishism

Conversely, the sculpture has historically faced pushback for its hyper-sexualized presentation. Her impossibly long legs, tiny waist, and revealing, tightly bound chest explicitly copy the aesthetics of bishōjo (beautiful young girl) and otaku (geek) subcultures.

The “Murakami-Bashing” Controversy: During major international showcases—such as its controversial inclusion at the Château de Versailles in 2010—traditionalists and conservative groups denounced the work as degrading, provocative, and disrespectful.

Subverting the Fetish: Murakami himself argues that this discomfort is intentional. By blowing up a pocket-sized, fetishized plastic anime figurine into a monumental, life-sized human scale, Miss Ko² forces the audience to confront the absurdity and psychological complexes surrounding the objectification of women in mass media.

3. Museum-Goer Perception: A “Spectacular” Narrative AnchorWithin the context of the Lucas Museum, general visitor perception has been overwhelmingly positive. Placed alongside historic manga pages and iconic cinematic artifacts (like a statue of Kaneda from Akira), everyday audiences view Miss Ko² as a breathtaking visual anchor. Rather than feeling purely scandalous, it is widely appreciated as a perfect example of modern narrative art—proving that comic books and animation carry just as much storytelling power as traditional oil paintings.

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Did Takashi Murakami appear at the opening ceremony?

Yes, Takashi Murakami did appear at the opening night celebration.He was spotted on the red carpet on Saturday, September 19, 2026, for the star-studded Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night Gala in Los Angeles.As one of the prominent contemporary artists featured in the museum’s inaugural collection, Murakami joined a high-profile guest list that included fellow art icons like Jeff Koons and Judy Baca, alongside Hollywood giants like Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and Christopher Nolan. The exclusive gala served as the grand preview ahead of the museum’s official public opening.

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From Oprah Winfrey and Christopher Nolan to Kim Kardashian and Robert De Niro: Inside the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Gala

By Marc Malkin
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Oprah Winfrey at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night Gala on September 19, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Earl Gibson III/Deadline via Getty Images) Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night Gala on September 19, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/WWD via Getty Images) Kim Kardashian at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night Gala on September 19, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/WWD via Getty Images) Robert De Niro and Tiffany Chen at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night Gala on September 19, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/WWD via Getty Images)
Earl Gibson III / Michael Buckner

During her introductory remarks at the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Saturday night, Mellody Hobson said her husband, famed “Star Wars” director George Lucas, was nervous about the evening’s turnout.

“This room is filled with our friends,” Hobson said. “Looking out at your faces, you have no idea how much you mean to us, how much you mean to us in every way. George kept saying, ‘Will this person come? Do you think that person will come?’ I said, ‘They will all come, George.’”

And come they did.

The powerhouse crowd was a melting pot of Hollywood, politics and business. The bold-faced names included Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, Michael B. Jordan, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Kim Kardashian, Cynthia Erivo, Christoper Nolan. Guillermo Del Toro, Peter Jackson, Denis Villeneuve, Edgar Wright, George R. R. Martin, Nicolas Cage, Doja Cat, Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola, Jon M. Chu, Vin Diesel, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Justin Trudeau, Keke Palmer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Michael Bloomberg, Bob Iger, Dana Walden, Janelle Monae, Lee Daniels, Ariana Huffington, Tracee Ellis Ross, Zac Posen, Jon Batiste, Diane Warren, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, among many others.

Lucas said he wanted to create a cultural institution that honors illustrators. “When we started this museum, we would sort of tag it as a ‘temple to illustrators,’” he said.

He continued, “I’ve worked with hundreds of illustrators, and I will tell you that they are as talented as any artist I have ever met. This is a way of giving back to them something they’ve all wanted…The illustrators inevitably say the same thing, from R. Crumb to [Norman] Rockwell, they all say the same, ‘I wish I could be in a museum.’”

While Winfrey, Erivo, Kardashian and Rodriguez strolled through the galleries, most of the heavy hitters made their way to the fifth-floor Skywalker Grill restaurant. DiCaprio enjoyed sushi in a banquette with Al Pacino, Andrew Watt and David Furnish. Nolan leaned over to say hello to a seated Coppola. Ron Howard and his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard took photos with Kardashian and her boyfriend, car racing champion Lewis Hamilton.

Building the $1.5 billion museum, which was entirely funded by Lucas and Hobson, came with plenty of headaches. In the 20 years since Lucas first proposed the idea, the museum was close to being located in San Francisco and then Chicago. Located in L.A.’s Exposition Park, the Lucas Museum features 1,200 works from Lucas’s 30,000-piece private art collection. Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the five-story building, which is frequently described as a “spaceship,” is 300,000 square feet, with 100,000 dedicated to 35 galleries, and sits among a 13-acre campus.

“If your husband or spouse comes home and says they want to build a museum, I suggest your response is a hard no,” Hobson cracked.

She addressed critics who turn their noses up at illustrators. “If critics say a museum of narrative art is too much like a popcorn movie and not enough like an art film, well, we like popcorn movies in our family,” Hobson said to applause. “In fact, we love them.”

The opening night co-chairs included Julie Bell, Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Sir Lewis Hamilton, JR, Steven Spielberg and Pharrell Williams. They all stood on stage as Queen Latifah emceed the opening remarks.

“I’m not pinching myself because I felt all the energy and pain of birthing it with George,” Hobson told me on the arrivals red carpet. “I still have a feeling of disbelief. How do we have a museum? It doesn’t quite make sense. Who thinks they’re ever going to say, ‘Come to my museum?’ And you especially don’t do that if you’re me and you’re the youngest of six kids of a single mom in Chicago. That in and of itself is a story. And those are the kinds of stories that are reflected on the walls of the museum.”

As the well-heeled crowd gathered in the lobby for the evening’s introduction, Latifah played cheerleader. “Paris has the Louvre, New York has the Met, and now L.A. has its artistic equal – the Lucas,” she said to cheers and applause.

And with that comes inspiration. Erivo zeroed in on “The Huntress (Lenda),” Julie Bell’s 1996 oil painting of eight-time Ms. Olympia winner Lenda Murray depicted as the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana. Snapping a photo of the fantasy portrait, Erivo smiled, “We have to make a TV series about her.”

The evening’s program included a drone show narrated by Winfrey and Jackson and a performance by the Black Eyed Peas.

The museum opens to the public on Sept. 22.

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