Spaceship-shaped gallery, featuring works from Banksy, Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo, is devoted to ‘visual storytelling’ – and is finally ready to open

“I’m used to doing the impossible,” George Lucas said on Wednesday. But “this one almost broke my will”.

The film-maker was describing the decades of work that went into his latest project, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, as it was unveiled to the press in Los Angeles eight years after breaking ground, following attempts to build it in two other cities. Shaped like a spaceship and towering over the nearby University of Southern California – Lucas’s alma mater – the long-awaited institution finally opens on 22 September. It aims to be a testament to visual storytelling across all kinds of media – paintings, comics, murals, photography, sculpture.

Artist posted social media video showing large sculpture being towed into Waterloo Place in middle of night

A new Banksy statue, featuring a man with his face covered by a flag, was this week erected in the dead of night in central London.

His new work of art was first spotted on Wednesday, and the artist’s signature was scrawled at the base of the statue’s plinth.

Our fascination with the ‘real’ identities of artists and writers is revealing about attitudes to fame and authorship

This week, contemporary art’s worst-kept secret was exposed when street artist Banksy was revealed to be 52-year-old Robin Gunningham, thanks to an 8,000-word investigation by Reuters. This would have been big news had the Mail on Sunday not got there first nearly two decades ago. Still, it made headlines.

The previous week, thousands of book lovers expressed their grief at the announcement on X of the death of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, supposedly by her translator Ann Goldstein. In fact, it was the work of infamous Italian hoaxer Tommaso Debenedetti, who had set up an account in Goldstein’s name, and who pulled the same trick in 2022.

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British street artist’s ‘real’ name reported after an investigation stretching from Ukraine to New York and London. Kelly Burke explains all to Nick Miller

Hi Kelly, everyone is talking about Banksy (again) – what’s he done this time?

Hi Nick. So a really long (8,000-word) investigation by Reuters claims it has discovered the elusive street artist’s true identity, which backs up claims made by the Mail on Sunday British tabloid almost two decades ago that he is a 52-year-old Bristol-born man called Robin Gunningham, now going by the name of David Jones.

Vor 18 Jahren hieß es schon einmal, die Identität des Street-Art-Künstlers sei enthüllt, doch der letzte Beweis fehlte. Nun wollen Journalisten ihn gefunden haben. Ihre Recherche führt sie zu einem alten Bekannten.