On Wednesday the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced Sandra Jackson-Dumont as its new director and chief executive officer. She comes to L.A. from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where since 2014 she headed public programs, community engagement and academic initiatives as well as live arts performances for diverse audiences.
Co-founded by filmmaker and Star Wars creator George Lucas and his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, the $1 billion art museum will showcase the couple’s 100,000-item collection. It is currently under construction, with the majority of the work expected to be completed by late 2021.
Jackson-Dumont started out as a biology major at Sonoma State University in California before switching to art history. After earning her Masters from Howard University in Washington D.C. she completed a fellowship in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney in New York.
When I was in undergrad, I came to New York on the national student exchange program and had an internship at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It was then that I realised that I wanted to change my major to art history. I went back to my campus and I ran an art gallery, the Intercultural Cultural Center Gallery, based on what I had learned. My first full time job was at the Whitney. Connie Wolf hired me to run something called the Youth Insights program, which is now almost 20 years old.
The Museum broke ground in March 2018 on a bustling site in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. The futuristic building, designed architect Ma Yansong, will contain two restaurants and two theaters — a total of 300,000 square feet.
