The forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles announced on Tuesday that construction plans for its museum campus has been delayed from to 2023 to 2025.
Construction and other delays related to supply chain issues exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic are the cause of the delay, the Lucas Museum Director Sandra Jackson-Dumont told The Los Angeles Times.
The move is the latest shift in the project’s timeline, which first launched in March 2018 with an aim to open the museum in 2021. Prior construction delays forced the museum’s leadership in April of last year to move the institution’s opening to 2023.
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Co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, who are featured on ARTnews‘s list of Top 200 collectors, the museum is set to focus on narrative works of art that range from paintings and illustrations to photography, film, animation, and digital art.
Moves to construct the intricately-designed exterior surface of the five-story Los Angeles flagship, led by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, are already underway, Dumont has said.
Though the museum’s opening has been delayed, its collection continues to expand. Among the Lucas Museum’s 2022 acquisitions are prints, photographs, and paintings by Laura Aguilar Jaime Hernandez, Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Frida Kahlo, and Alice Neel.
Supply chain issues have impacted other major U.S. museums in the middle of expansions and renovations. In March, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo saw delays and rising costs resulting in an estimated $12 to $20 million rise in its estimated budget for its $168 million expansion. In July, the Bruce Museum in Greenwich extended a temporary closure due to supply chain issues that delayed its $60 million multiyear expansion project, which began in 2019.