Nov. 17--"Star Wars" creator George Lucas has named Don Bacigalupi as founding president of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, planned for Chicago's lakefront, the museum announced Monday.
Bacigalupi is currently the president of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton. His appointment in Chicago is effective Jan. 15.
He joined Crystal Bridges as executive director in 2009 and developed the museum before its 2011 opening. Bacigalupi will remain a member of the Crystal Bridges' board, according to a news release from the Lucas museum.
"Don's decades of experience include a proven track record for building a museum from inception, and he recognizes that community partnerships and multidimensional programming are critical to ensuring a museum's long-term impact," Lucas said in a statement.
The Lucas museum is planned to replace two parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place. The site, offered by the city and Park District to Lucas, has been mired in controversy with open-space advocates filing suit last week to block the museum.
Friends of the Parks is arguing that the site was part of Lake Michigan, then filled in during the 1920s and thus now a protected waterway bound by the "public trust doctrine."
Lucas is nevertheless moving forward. Before joining Crystal Bridges, Bacigalupi served as chief executive of the Toledo Museum of Art and executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art.
A spokeswoman for the museum declined a request for an interview with Bacigalupi.
As far as startup museums go, Crystal Bridges has been an unparalleled success, drawing 1 million visitors to the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas in 21 months.
Nearly 70 percent of its $15.2 million budget is funded by Walton, according to the museum's 2012 annual report, the most recent one available on its website.
And its ambitions are growing -- 498 purchases in its inaugural year to add to the collection of Sargents, O'Keeffes, Rockwells and Pollocks. Earlier this year the museum bought an endangered Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in New Jersey with plans to move it to the museum's campus.
Forbes pegs Walton's net worth at about $38 billion and Lucas' at about $4.4 billion.
The year Walton opened her museum in 2011 she announced three gifts, through her Walton Family Foundation, to the museum: $350 million for an operating endowment; a $325 million endowment for acquisitions; and a $125 million endowment for improvements and maintenance, what the museum called a rainy-day fund.
That $800 million did not include construction costs or the purchase price of works up to that point.
Lucas has not announced how he will finance his museum -- other than to say that he will pay for it. When he proposed a much smaller museum for San Francisco, his hometown, Lucas committed $300 million for construction and a $400 million endowment over time.
mmharris@tribune.com
Twitter @chiconfidential
