The Lucas Museum has Finally Landed in Los Angeles

After years of anticipation, Los Angeles has a new museum, and it looks like almost nothing else in the city.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art officially opened on September 22 in Exposition Park. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the institution is dedicated to visual storytelling in its broadest sense, placing works that museums have traditionally kept separate into one continuous history.

The Lucas Museum has Finally Landed in Los Angeles - 01-lucas-plaza-courtesy-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-photo-by-hufton-crow-jpeg-press-use — Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo by Hufton Crow

That means a visit can move from painting and photography to comics, illustration, murals, manga, and cinema. The inaugural exhibitions bring together more than 1,300 works across 30-plus galleries, with names ranging from Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, and Diego Rivera to Charles Schulz, Takashi Murakami, Gordon Parks, and Frank Frazetta.

And yes, there is Star Wars. The museum holds the complete Lucas Archives from 1971 to 2012, and its opening cinema exhibition, Star Wars in Motion, explores the vehicles of the first six films through original concept designs, costumes, props, and illustrations. But the museum is deliberately much bigger than Lucas’s own cinematic universe. Its central idea is that the images surrounding us, whether hanging in a gallery, printed in a comic book, or projected onto a screen, deserve to be understood as part of the same visual culture.

Then there is the building itself.

The Lucas Museum has Finally Landed in Los Angeles - 08-courtesy-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-photo-by-hufton-crow-jpeg-press-use

The Lucas Museum has Finally Landed in Los Angeles - 30-courtesy-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-photo-by-iwan-baan-jpeg-press-use

Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photos by Hufton Crow

Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec, the 300,000-square-foot structure appears to hover above the ground. Its fluid exterior contains more than 1,200 individually shaped panels, while a 185-foot central arch opens toward the public plaza below. Inside are more than 100,000 square feet of galleries, two theaters, classrooms, and a free research library.

Outside, Mia Lehrer and Studio-MLA transformed the surrounding 13 acres into a park filled with greenery, pathways, and monumental sculpture.

It is ambitious, slightly surreal, and impossible to ignore. Which, for a museum built around the power of imagination, feels exactly right.