Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opens in Los Angeles with Broad Pop Culture Collection
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public on Sept. 22 in Los Angeles, featuring a diverse range of comic, illustration and fine-art works, with Star Wars exhibits comprising about 7% of the display.
Los Angeles will welcome the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Sept. 22, offering visitors a 100,000-square-foot venue that showcases comic strips, commercial illustration, paperback covers and works by recognized fine-art painters. The museum’s collection, largely drawn from the personal holdings of founder George Lucas and co-founder Mellody Hobson, includes pieces by Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol and a variety of sci-fi and fantasy art.
Museum chief executive Tracey Bates said the goal is to give “incredibly familiar pieces that have not had the opportunity to be platformed in this manner, to be placed like this, to be curated in this way, for people to really see the genius behind it.”
“That’s really what the mission is, that there’s these incredibly familiar pieces that have not had the opportunity to be platformed in this manner, to be placed like this, to be curated in this way, for people to really see the genius behind it,” museum CEO Tracey Bates told the Associated Press.
Lucas, who attended a preview with Hobson, noted that the project had faced multiple setbacks before securing its Los Angeles location after earlier proposals in San Francisco and Chicago fell through.
“Part of the problem is that I’m a contrarian. I don’t like to do things people think can be done,” Lucas said at the preview.
The opening exhibition, “Star Wars in Motion,” displays production models such as Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and speeder bikes, but Bates emphasized that Star Wars accounts for only about 7% of the museum’s holdings. Other galleries are organized around themes like sports, civic activism and everyday life rather than strict chronological or genre categories.
Senior curator Ryan Linkof explained the curatorial approach: “We’re interested in the stories that they’re telling, rather than these kind of somewhat artificial categories defined by discipline.”
Architect Ma Yansong’s design, described by the architect as resembling a floating cloud or tree canopy, features broad oval windows that frame views of the surrounding Exposition Park area. The building houses an architecture gallery that presents early design proposals for the museum’s previous planned sites.
The museum also includes dedicated spaces for comic-book art, fantasy illustrations, and a children’s section featuring works such as Hilary Knight’s “Eloise at the Plaza” and a Pikachu piece modeled on a Van Gogh self-portrait.
The Lucas Museum aims to present a wide spectrum of narrative art, positioning popular and commercial works alongside traditionally celebrated fine-art pieces in a setting intended to encourage public engagement with visual storytelling.