Top 200 Collectors

For filmmaker George Lucas and co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments Mellody Hobson, collecting art is a shared passion. Prior to their 2013 marriage, the couple were each building their own art collections. Hobson had been building a collection focused on contemporary art by African-American artists, including pieces by Kara Walker, Gary Simmons, and Norman Lewis. Lucas meanwhile has spent four-plus decades collecting American art, including works by Norman Rockwell, Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Frazetta, Jacob Lawrence, Winsor McCay, Gordon Parks, and Maxfield Parrish, as well as popular illustrative, digital, comic, cinematic, and animation art.

The Lucas-Hobson collection they have assembled together sits at the intersection of their shared interests, and also includes works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Tamara de Lempicka, Robert Indiana, Carrie Mae Weems, Frida Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Chuck Close, among many others.

“George and I truly believe in the power of imagination to change lives. I started collecting art by African American artists early in my adult life. I was excited to focus on these talented artists and the investor in me saw their works as undervalued,” Hobson told ARTnews in an email interview, noting that an early acquisition was a piece by Walker. “Our dream is that anyone who visits the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will see themselves and their stories reflected in the art they see and will find new ways of understanding the world around us.” 

Added Lucas, “For me, narrative art provides insights into societies and what people aspire to, what they really want, who they really are and/or who they wish to be. That has always inspired me as a collector and it continues to inspire me as we think about the impact the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will have on people’s lives.” 

On the business side, Lucas is perhaps best known as the creator of the “Star Wars” film series. His Industrial Light & Magic company, responsible for the groundbreaking visual effects seen in “Star Wars,” helped revolutionize the industry. At the Chicago-based investment management firm Ariel Investments, Hobson is responsible for managing business operations, development, and strategic initiatives of a firm that handles some $18.3 billion in assets, as of year-end 2021. She is also chairwoman of the board of Starbucks Corporation and a director of JPMorgan Chase.

Philanthropy is also a key part of the couple’s endeavors. Hobson is chair of After School Matters, a nonprofit that provides Chicago teens with high-quality, out-of-school-time programs, and serves on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lucas founded the George Lucas Educational Foundation in 1991 to transform K-12 education for all students, and serves on the boards of the Film Foundation and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. In 2010, they signed onto the Giving Pledge, which has seen some of the country’s richest people commit to donating the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

In October 2020, Princeton University in New Jersey announced that it would name a residential housing complex after Hobson, an alumna of the institution who had made a sizable donation for the buildings to be torn down and rebuilt. Her name replaces that of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, after students campaigned to remove his name for his segregationist views. “My hope is that my name will remind future generations of students—especially those who are Black and brown and the ‘firsts’ in their families—that they too belong,” Hobson said in a statement at the time.

And on top of all of this, the couple are the cofounders (and co-chairs) of the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, whose custom-made building is designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects. The museum, which has works by as diverse a range of artists as Norman Rockwell and Judith F. Baca, hired Sandra Jackson-Dumont, formerly the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s education chairman, as director, adding more anticipation to the already hotly anticipated institution.

Lucas and Hobson continue to throw major support to the Lucas Museum, helping it acquire a spread of works, including Robert Colescott’s George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook (1975), which set a record when they purchased it for $15.3 million at Sotheby’s, and The Triumph of Galatea (ca. 1650), a painting attributed to Artemisia Gentileschi and an associate. “The stories that art tells are often key to understanding a society and its aspirations—whether our own or others,” Lucas has said. “We hope the Lucas Museum will help audiences better understand the world and build toward a more just and empathetic society.”