The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public September 22 in Los Angeles, ending a 17-year journey for George Lucas and Mellody Hobson. The new building brings fine art, comics, illustration, photography and cinema into one collection centered on the way images tell stories.
The Associated Press describes the institution as a roughly $1 billion project. It stands in Exposition Park, near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, inside a building designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec.
George Lucas built a museum around stories
Lucas did not design the collection as a Star Wars museum alone. Its range moves from prehistoric images to contemporary art, with work by artists including Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell and many others displayed beside comic pages, film material and popular illustration.
Explaining the idea, Lucas said, “The artists in this collection didn’t just create images, they connected our modern imaginations with our ancient emotions.”
The first exhibitions include more than 1,300 works across over 30 galleries. The building covers 300,000 square feet, with about 100,000 square feet devoted to gallery space.
Hobson and Lucas also placed the museum inside a 13-acre park designed by Mia Lehrer and Studio-MLA. The landscape is meant to function as a public space rather than only a path to the entrance.
Star Wars in Motion opens with the museum
The strongest connection to Lucas’s film career is an exhibition called Star Wars in Motion. It uses concept art, models, props, costumes and vehicle designs from the first six films in the saga.
The display follows the movement of Star Wars machines, beginning with Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder and stretching through later creations such as General Grievous’s Wheel Bike. The museum also holds the complete Lucas Archives covering 1971 through 2012.
That archive gives the institution access to the working material behind Star Wars and Lucas’s other productions. The film objects sit inside a larger argument: concept drawings and costumes can be studied as narrative art, not only as collectibles from famous movies.
The building includes more than galleries
Two theaters will run films and public programs. A research library will be free to use, and the Skywalker Grill will serve as the museum’s restaurant. Education areas, event spaces and the surrounding gardens expand the visit beyond a single exhibition route.
The opening-night celebration took place September 19, with Tom Cruise, Greta Gerwig, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Pharrell Williams and other figures from film and art serving as co-chairs.
The public opening on September 22 is the real finish line. Years of location debates, design work and construction have produced a museum that finally lets visitors see how Lucas and Hobson connect Saturday-morning comics, gallery paintings and a galaxy far, far away.
For Star Wars fans, the film archive will be the immediate attraction. For Lucas, the larger goal is to show that the pictures people grow up with can carry the same emotional weight as the art they are taught to admire in a museum.
