Production designer Norman Reynolds’ robot R2-D2, left, and John Mollo’s costume for the C-3PO character from the “Star Wars” franchise are displayed in the Cinema Gallery during a preview of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
LOS ANGELES – The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art offered the media a first look this week at its long-awaited Exposition Park home, with co-founder George Lucas making an unannounced appearance ahead of the museum’s Sept. 22 public opening.
The preview offered a look inside the five-story, 300,000-square-foot museum, which was founded by Lucas and business executive Mellody Hobson and is dedicated to visual storytelling across cultures, centuries and media.
A visitor looks at Mel Ramos’ oil paintings “Man of Steel,” left, and “The Green Lantern” during a preview of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The museum will feature more than 100,000 square feet of exhibition space across more than 30 galleries, with its inaugural exhibitions presenting more than 1,300 works from the collection, according to the museum.
Lucas, whose “Star Wars” films are represented prominently in the collection, said the museum was created to recognize artists whose work tells stories through images.
A sculpture of the “Star Wars” character Yoda is displayed along a walking path in the garden area of the the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art during a preview of the museum on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was created to honor humanity’s stories and the artists who illustrate them,” Lucas said. “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.”
Mellody Hobson, left, and George Lucas, co-founders of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, appear during a press preview for the museum on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The museum’s collection ranges from paintings, illustrations and photography to comics, children’s books, murals and cinema. Artists represented include Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Frank Frazetta, Diego Rivera, Gordon Parks, Charles Schulz, Robert Crumb and Judith F. Baca.
The inaugural exhibitions will trace the history of narrative art, beginning with a first-floor exhibition exploring heroes, myths and sacred imagery across thousands of years, according to the museum.
Other galleries will focus on themes including love, family and community, as well as fantasy, romance and adventure. Galleries dedicated to various forms of storytelling will feature comic books, manga, graphic novels, photography and murals.
The museum also will display reproductions of works and sites that cannot be moved, including the Sistine Chapel ceiling, ancient cave paintings from Altamira in Spain and the Aztec Sun Stone.
The museum’s cinema collection includes the complete Lucas Archives from 1971 to 2012. An inaugural exhibition titled “Star Wars in Motion” will feature concept designs, props and costumes associated with vehicles from the first six “Star Wars” films, including Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and the first physical build of General Grievous’ Wheel Bike.
“We wanted a museum unlike any other — one that brings people from every walk of life through the same doors,” Hobson said. “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.”
The building was designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects with Stantec and features a curving exterior clad in more than 1,200 individually shaped panels. A central arch spanning 185 feet rises above a public plaza.
The museum is surrounded by a new 13-acre park and gardens designed by landscape architect Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA on land that was previously an asphalt parking lot. The grounds include more than 300 newly planted trees, an amphitheater, a meadow, a hanging garden and 10 monumental outdoor sculptures.
The museum will also feature two theaters offering continuous film programs, a research library that will be free to the public and Skywalker Grill, a full-service restaurant open to museum visitors and the general public.
The research library includes more than 30,000 comic books, select holdings from the Skywalker Ranch Library, about 3,000 art books donated by Steve Martin and his wife, Ann Martin, and more than 2,900 volumes from the personal library of writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose work influenced Lucas’ creation of “Star Wars,” museum officials said.
Member preview days will be held Sept. 5-11, followed by a Neighborhood Preview Day Sept. 13 for community partners, local businesses, students and residents of the museum’s 90037 ZIP code.
An opening-night celebration Sept. 19 will be co-chaired by Julie Bell, Tom Cruise, Greta Gerwig, Jensen Huang, JR, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro and Pharrell Williams, officials said. (CNS)
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