George Lucas's $1 Billion Museum of 'People's Art' Opens in L.A. on September 22

In the gardens outside the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a bronze statue of Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt with a chain stands beside a 19th-century cast of Antonin Mercié's David conquering Goliath, with Rosie the Riveter nearby, gaze averted. It is an odd welcome party — and a precise one. When the museum opens to the public on September 22 in Los Angeles's Exposition Park, that collision of mythology, pop culture, and fine art will be the whole point.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has cost filmmaker George Lucas roughly $1 billion of his own money and more than 16 years of effort, including abandoned plans to build in San Francisco and Chicago, a pandemic-era construction slowdown, contractor disputes, staff layoffs, and the departure of its director. At a private press preview, Lucas acknowledged the toll. 'This has been a long haul,' he told reporters. 'This one almost broke my will.'

This has been a long haul. Part of the problem is I'm a contrarian. I don't like to do things that people think can be done.— George Lucas, co-founder, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

The museum, co-founded with Lucas's wife Mellody Hobson — a former Starbucks chair and current chief executive of Ariel Investments — presents itself as a democratic institution in a $1 billion building. Its 40,000-piece permanent collection spans 20th-century comic strips, children's book illustrations, science fiction art, murals, photography, and works by Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, Mary Cassatt, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. Star Wars materials — vehicles, costumes, props — are present but account for only about 7% of what's on display. The 82-year-old Lucas has been emphatic: this is not a Star Wars museum.

The building itself makes an argument before a visitor sees a single artwork. Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the 300,000-square-foot structure is a sinuous white form that hovers above Exposition Park like a grounded spacecraft. Ma has said he drew inspiration from clouds and wanted the central plaza to feel 'spiritual.' The building is elevated, casting shade over a public plaza below, with an oculus open to the sky.

In Los Angeles, you need a canopy, you need shading, you need the architecture to protect people from the sun. So this building is like a big tree. It's elevated. It's floating. And it casts a shadow for people underneath. We created a big plaza with shading, but with an oculus that allows people to observe the sky, so there can be this conversation between humans and the universe.— Ma Yansong, architect and founder, MAD Architects

The 100,000 square feet of gallery space is organized not by period or artist but by human experience: galleries are named 'love,' 'family,' 'community,' 'play,' 'work,' 'sports,' 'childhood,' and 'adventure.' The open-plan, curvilinear design means galleries flow into one another without hard divisions, reinforcing the museum's argument that no single form of art sits above another. Visitors can move from a room of Norman Rockwell paintings — including his Civil Rights-era 'The Problem We All Live With' — directly into a space containing Luke Skywalker's X-34 Landspeeder.

The museum's founding category, 'narrative art,' is the organizing idea behind all of it. The museum defines it as any art that tells a story — a definition broad enough to encompass ancient cave painting recreations, a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel, Frank Miller comics, Gordon Parks photographs, and General Grievous's wheel bike from Revenge of the Sith. A ground-floor 'History of Narrative Art' exhibit presents works in glass portals and digital projections, mixing originals with reproductions of pieces that could not be physically transported.

Narrative art is rooted in storytelling; it is art that translates words into images. While all art has a story, not all art is about stories.— Ryan Linkof, senior curator and head of film programmes, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

The museum's democratic ambitions extend to its pricing. Children 17 and younger enter free, as do the roughly 65,000 residents of the 90037 zip code in South Los Angeles, who can register for an annual pass. The on-site library is free for all visitors. General adult admission is $25. Hobson, who was raised by a single mother who struggled with financial instability, has said she wants the gift shop to sell one item for 25 cents: a pencil printed with 'First Draft,' 'Second Draft,' and 'Third Draft' that reveals each label as it is sharpened.

This is a museum of the people's art — the images are illustrations of beliefs we live with every day. For that reason, this art belongs to everyone. Our hope is that as people move through the galleries, they will see themselves, and their humanity, reflected back.— Mellody Hobson, co-founder, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

The museum's film program is substantial. Two 299-seat theaters will run programming throughout the day. One, named for documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty, will screen a specially commissioned film titled Seeing Is Believing: The Story of Narrative Art, along with documentaries about artists including Diego Rivera and photographer Weegee. The second theater, named for filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich, is dedicated to 'the emotion of motion' — early silent films by Georges Méliès and Émile Cohl, episodes of the anime series Cowboy Bebop, experimental films by Man Ray, and Lucas's own student films.

A late addition to the fourth floor — a surprise even to some staff, according to CNN — is an exhibition dedicated to original Banksy murals. The museum's flagship restaurant, Skywalker Grill, sits at the top of the building with city views and is already taking reservations.

The road to opening was marked by repeated setbacks. Lucas first proposed a cultural institution dedicated to visual storytelling more than 16 years ago. Plans for sites in San Francisco and Chicago were both abandoned before Exposition Park was selected. The museum broke ground in 2018 and was originally scheduled to open in 2021; it was pushed back twice. Covid-19 significantly delayed construction, and conflicts between architects and contractors followed. A contractor has since filed a lawsuit against the museum for unpaid work, according to the Los Angeles Times, which also reported the arrangement shines fresh light on a land deal the museum received from the state of California.

Leadership turnover compounded the delays. Director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who had led the museum for five years, departed in March 2025 — roughly 18 months before opening — with Lucas himself assuming responsibility for curatorial direction. In May of last year, the museum laid off 15 full-time and seven part-time employees, most of them in education and museum services. Chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas resigned in December, with no replacement announced. Current CEO Tracey Bates, at the press preview, said Lucas had 'always had a front seat with the curatorial.'

From the beginning, George and Mellody have had a clear vision for the mission of the museum: to platform and celebrate illustrators and artists whose work traditional institutions have often overlooked or excluded. The Lucas Museum is dedicated to creating a home for these unsung heroes of narrative art.— Tracey Bates, chief executive, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

The museum opens into an art world already in the middle of rethinking its own hierarchies. Institutions including New York's Museum of Modern Art and London's Tate Britain have in recent years rehung permanent collections to bring overlooked artists into dialogue with canonical ones. The Lucas Museum pushes that logic further, placing commercial illustration, movie props, and anime on equal footing with Impressionist painting — and doing so in a building that cost more than the recently opened Obama Presidential Center, which came in at $850 million, according to CNN.

Narrative art is important because it depicts the myths that anchor us, the stories that we believe in. They may not necessarily be true, but they unite us as families, as communities, as countries, as nations.— Mellody Hobson, co-founder, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Whether the museum's curation matches its ambition is already a matter of debate. The Los Angeles Times, in an early review, called it 'one of L.A.'s boldest, most contradictory buildings' — 'synthetic yet organic, populist yet elitist' — praising the park and structural design while finding the galleries wanting. CNN noted that the vast array of exhibits 'sometimes struggle for cohesiveness,' a tension it linked to the turbulence in museum leadership ahead of opening. The concept of 'narrative art' itself has drawn skepticism; the Art Newspaper noted that the venerated local critic Christopher Knight wrote critically about the category as far back as 2017.

Lucas, for his part, has called the museum 'a temple to the people's art.' The 11-acre campus — gardens, theaters, library, restaurant, and public spaces included — opens September 22. More than 100 schools are within a ten-mile radius.

Why it matters — The Lucas Museum is the largest privately funded cultural institution to open in Los Angeles in decades, and its bet that comics, movie props, and fine art belong in the same room — free to children and local residents — will test whether a billion-dollar museum can genuinely serve 'the people.'

Sources differ on Number of works on display at opening: More than 1,200 objects in 35 galleries (theartnewspaper.com) vs More than 1,300 objects across 30 galleries (cnn.com)

Reported by theartnewspaper.com, latimes.com, cnn.com, lucasmuseum.org, nytimes.com