On September 13 at the community preview for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the feeling was one of arrival. Across the new campus in Exposition Park, visitors moved between gardens, monumental sculpture, and the museum’s extraordinary architecture, entering a cultural space conceived around something elemental: the human impulse to tell stories through images.
Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum opens to the public on September 22. Its 300,000-square-foot building, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec, contains more than 100,000 square feet of gallery space across more than 30 galleries. Its collection moves across cultures, centuries, and mediums, placing works by artists including Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, Robert Colescott, Frank Frazetta, and Robert Crumb alongside cinema, comics, illustration, photography, and murals. Here, visual storytelling is treated as a shared human language.
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Hufton Crow.
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was created to honor humanity’s stories and the artists who illustrate them,” said Lucas. “The artists in this collection didn’t just create images, they connected our modern imaginations with our ancient emotions—with common beliefs creating community. Their work spans genres, media, and time. They deserve to be in a museum.”
A Preview for the Community
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 13: Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles performs during Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Neighborhood Preview Day at Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on September 13, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art).
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 13: (L-R) Mellody Hobson and George Lucas, Founders, The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art attend Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Neighborhood Preview Day at Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on September 13, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art).
The preview offered a particularly meaningful first glimpse of the museum, welcoming thousands of neighbors, community organizations, local business owners, and civic leaders.
Before the day’s events began, a ceremony honored the people and organizations instrumental in bringing the project to life. The Inner City Youth Orchestra opened the celebration, followed by remarks from founders Lucas and Hobson, Lucas Museum CEO Tracey Bates, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Ambassador Eric Garcetti, and LA Commons founder and executive director Karen Mack.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 13: (L-R) Mayor Karen Bass and Tracey Bates, CEO, The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art attend Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Neighborhood Preview Day at Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on September 13, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art).
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 13: Drummers of Compton perform during Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Neighborhood Preview Day at Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on September 13, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art).
The program closed with a performance by the Drummers of Compton in the Plaza. Among the community organizations represented were SLATE-Z, LA Trade Technical College, Brotherhood Crusade, CD Tech, Community Coalition, Community Partners, CRCD, LA Promise Fund, Move LA, SAJE, and YWCA. For South Los Angeles residents, the museum’s LM37 pass also offers free admission to those living in the 90037 zip code, extending the spirit of the preview into the museum’s life beyond opening day.
Inside the Galleries
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Paul Salveson.
The inaugural presentation brings together more than 1,300 works. On the first floor, “The History of Narrative Art: Heroes • Myths • The Sacred” reaches back tens of thousands of years, pairing works from the collection with remarkably detailed reproductions of significant artworks, architecture, and archaeological sites from around the world.
Among them are the Sistine Chapel ceiling, created in collaboration with the Vatican Museums; the Winged Human-Headed Bulls from the Palace of Sargon II, developed with the Louvre; ancient cave paintings from Altamira; and Mexico’s Aztec Sun Stone. High-resolution photography and 3-D scanning technology make these encounters possible while also providing digital resources to the institutions that collaborated on their creation.
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was created to honor humanity’s stories and the artists who illustrate them.”
–George Lucas
Higher in the building, the galleries open into thematic and medium-based explorations. Love, family, community, labor, sport, fantasy, romance, and adventure become connective threads, bringing together artists as varied as Vincent van Gogh, Jacob Lawrence, Beatrix Potter, Charles White, George Méliès, Takashi Murakami, Gordon Parks, Diego Rivera, and Judith F. Baca.
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Iwan Baan.
For fans of cinematic history, Star Wars in Motion draws from the Lucas Archives, presenting concept designs, props, and costumes from the first six films, including Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder and the physical build of General Grievous’s Wheel Bike.
Architecture as Experience
Lucas Plaza. Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Hufton Crow.
The building itself becomes part of the story. Inspired by the trees of Exposition Park, Ma Yansong envisioned a sculptural form without a single straight line. Its 185-foot central arch opens onto a sheltered plaza, while an elliptical oculus four stories above draws the eye upward.
More than 1,200 individually shaped fiberglass-reinforced polymer panels form the exterior, contributing to the building’s sweeping, almost weightless appearance.
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Iwan Baan.
Around it, Mia Lehrer and Studio-MLA’s 13-acre Park and Gardens transform what was once an asphalt parking lot into a richly planted public landscape. More than 300 trees, meadows, grasses, flowering plants, a hanging garden, amphitheater, and waterfall-like fountain create space for gathering, wandering, and pause. Ten monumental sculptures extend the museum’s storytelling outdoors, with works by Fernando Botero, Prune Nourry, Benjamin Victor, and others.
Beyond the Galleries
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Iwan Baan.
The experience continues into the Robert Flaherty Theater and Slavko Vorkapich Theater, where continuous, drop-in film programs explore documentary, experimental cinema, animation, editing, and the mechanics of moving images. Films range from a few minutes to 90 minutes, allowing visitors to shape their own encounter.
Library. Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Hufton Crow.
A free Research Library adds another dimension, with more than 30,000 comic books, rare books and archives, approximately 3,000 art books donated by Steve and Ann Martin, and more than 2,900 volumes from Joseph Campbell’s personal library.
At the top of the museum, Skywalker Grill, designed by Rockwell Group, offers California-grown ingredients, panoramic views, and a warm interior of cherry wood and sculptural forms.
“We wanted a museum unlike any other— one that brings people from every walk of life through the same doors,” said Hobson. “That’s why this collection holds so many different kinds of stories: so that more people can walk in and, somewhere in these galleries, see themselves—and the world they know—reflected back. That kind of recognition is what we built this place to offer.”
The opening marks the arrival of a museum that asks visitors to move freely between art forms and eras—to look, discover, remember, and imagine. After our Community Preview, one thing felt especially clear: the Lucas Museum has created a place where the story is never confined to one gallery, one medium, or one generation. It belongs to everyone who walks through its doors.
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Paul Salveson.
Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Lou Caltabiano.
