Lucas Museum Opens in LA With a $1B Bet That Illustration Belongs in the Canon

Queen Latifah said it plainly from the stage: 'A new institution is being born, and it is here to change the way we look at art.' Whether the art world agrees is another matter — but on a Saturday night ahead of the public opening, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art made its case in the most Los Angeles way imaginable: with Harrison Ford, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, a 27-piece orchestra, a gospel choir of 75, and a closing drone show narrated by Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson.

The gala, held three days before the museum's public opening on September 22, marked the end of a journey that took nearly two decades, spanned three cities, and cost $1 billion — funded entirely by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson. What stands in Los Angeles's Exposition Park is a five-story, 300,000-square-foot building whose founders are adamant it is not a Star Wars museum — though visitors to its inaugural exhibition are greeted by Princess Leia's costume, Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder, and the first physical build of General Grievous's Wheel Bike from Revenge of the Sith.

There wasn’t a major museum that had this kind of art for illustration. I’m hoping this will change that.— George Lucas, co-founder

That argument — that illustration, comics, animation, and cinematic imagery deserve a place beside painting and sculpture — is the museum's central and most contested claim. Lucas has collected comics since college, and the 40,000-piece collection he and Hobson have assembled ranges from Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo to Banksy and comic artist Jack Kirby, alongside 20th-century comic strips by illustrators like Robert Crumb and works by Maxfield Parrish. The galleries are organized not by period or medium but by human experience: 'love,' 'family,' 'play,' 'adventure,' 'community.' The logic is deliberate — this is a museum built to be legible to anyone, not just those with art-historical training.

This idea that everyone, despite their expertise or art-historical acumen, can appreciate art is at the core of the project and George’s vision. Many of the objects on view are works that people lived with in various ways — paperback books, magazines, posters — which makes the work inherently more democratic.— Ryan Linkof, senior curator and head of film programmes

The building itself announces that ambition before a visitor steps inside. Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the curving, science fiction-style structure rises above Exposition Park — directly across from Lucas's alma mater, the University of Southern California — and casts a wide shadow over a landscaped plaza designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. Three curved glass elevator tubes run through the interior. Ma described the design philosophy to The Art Newspaper as likening the building to a big tree that is elevated and floating, casting shade for people below while creating a plaza with an oculus for observing the sky and fostering a conversation between humans and the universe.

A cocktail reception in the plaza preceded the move indoors on opening night, where Voices of Fire — the Virginia Beach gospel group co-founded by Pharrell Williams and Bishop Ezekiel Williams — performed alongside Jon Batiste on piano and a choir of 75. They played Star Wars' Yoda's Theme and Pharrell's 'Happy.' Janelle Monáe and Spike Lee danced beneath the glass elevators. Later, guests rode those elevators to the fourth floor, where Samuel L. Jackson encountered his wax likeness as Jedi Master Mace Windu and pulled out his phone to photograph it. "To be immortalized here is more important than Madame Tussauds," he said. Mark Hamill stood next to his own life-sized figure as Luke Skywalker, laughed that 'he looks taller than me,' and crossed his arms to mimic the pose.

I really admire George’s ingenuity. He’s so creative, and no one deserves more recognition than he does. The museum is really unbelievable.— Mark Hamill, actor

The evening's co-chairs — Steven Spielberg, Greta Gerwig, Guillermo del Toro, Pharrell Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Queen Latifah, and Julie Bell — joined Lucas, Hobson, architect Ma Yansong, and museum CEO Tracey Bates on stage for a toast. Hobson, who wore custom Ashi on the red carpet, was candid about the difficulty of the road. Addressing the crowd, she said: "We did not realize how hard it would be to give the city a museum. Third time is a charm, but George insisted." The reference to 'third time' reflects a real history: the museum was proposed for San Francisco and Chicago before landing in Los Angeles, and after breaking ground in Exposition Park in March 2018, it was delayed repeatedly — first by the Covid-19 pandemic, then by conflicts between architects and contractors — pushing the opening from an original target of 2021 to September 2026.

If your husband or spouse comes home and says, 'They want to build a museum,' I suggest your response is a hard 'no.'— Mellody Hobson, co-founder

Hobson also addressed the critics directly. Speaking to the crowd, she said that if critics find a museum of narrative art more popcorn movie than art film, "well, we like popcorn movies in our family. In fact, we love them." "For George, art is not intellectual — it's emotional." Lucas echoed that on stage, saying that no one has the authority to determine what qualifies as art and what does not. "Art is in the eye of the beholder," he said. "If it moves you emotionally, then it is art." He acknowledged having faced criticism from many directions for that view, but said he holds it completely: "You get to decide what art is."

The skepticism Hobson referenced is real and longstanding. The category of 'narrative art' has drawn criticism from the art establishment since the museum was first announced. The museum has also faced internal turbulence: director Sandra Jackson-Dumont departed in March 2025 after five years in the role, leaving Lucas himself to take on the bulk of curatorial direction. The previous May, the museum cut 15 full-time and seven part-time positions, most of them in education and museum services — a decision that drew criticism in light of the founders' stated commitment to educational access.

That emphasis on access shapes the museum's admission structure in concrete ways. Children 17 and younger enter free, as do the roughly 65,000 residents of zip code 90037 — the South Los Angeles neighborhood surrounding the museum — who can register for an annual pass. Within a ten-mile radius, more than 100 schools are located. The on-site library, which holds books, magazines, and comics available for in-person research, is free to all visitors. General adult admission is $25; seniors pay $21. Hobson has said she wants the gift shop to carry one item priced at 25 cents: a pencil imprinted with the words 'First Draft,' 'Second Draft,' and 'Third Draft,' each label revealed as the pencil is sharpened down.

The museum's film programme adds another dimension. Two 299-seat theatres will run separate programmes: one named for documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty will show a specially commissioned film, Seeing Is Believing: The Story of Narrative Art, alongside documentaries about artists in the collection including Diego Rivera and Weegee. The second theatre, bearing the name of filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich, will take 'the emotion of motion' as its focus, with programming that ranges from early silent films by Georges Méliès and Émile Cohl and episodes of the anime series Cowboy Bebop to experimental films by Man Ray and student films made by Lucas himself.

I feel, and I know George feels this way, relieved that we got here. It was a push. We also feel gratitude to all the people who believed in us and helped us. And we feel happy that people like the museum. I hope people will visit the museum and leave asking the question: why? Which is George's big thing. It's not how, it's why. Why do people do what they do? Why do they believe what they believe? Why do we have the myths that we have? If we can get young and old people to ask why, I think we would not oversimplify so many things, which leads to some struggle and strife in our world.— Mellody Hobson, co-founder

The museum opens to the public on September 22. What it opens into is a city — and an art world — that has spent years debating whether it belongs. The building has landed. The argument is just beginning.

Why it matters — The Lucas Museum is the largest and most expensive museum to open in the United States in years, and its argument — that illustration and popular imagery deserve the same institutional respect as fine art — will shape how American museums think about their collections and their audiences.

Sources differ on Number of works displayed in inaugural exhibitions: More than 1,200 objects (theartnewspaper.com) vs More than 1,300 works (Multi-source web summary (nytimes.com))

Reported by nytimes.com, theartnewspaper.com, vogue.com, broadwayworld.com, lucasmuseum.it