After years of delay and anticipation among fans, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will open its doors in Los Angeles on Sept. 22. The 300,000-square-foot building — resembling a massive hovering spaceship straight out of a Star Wars movie — invites guests to journey through visual storytelling history, tracing the tradition from the prehistoric era to the modern day.
The museum is the passion project of George Lucas, 82, who spent 17 years turning it from fantasy into reality, and was co-founded by his wife, Mellody Hobson. It’ll house a vast collection of props, artifacts, and artwork from the first six Star Wars films and the first four Indiana Jones films, the two franchises the filmmaker is best known for conceiving.
Also on display across more than 30 galleries in the five-story space are original works by Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, Charles Schulz, Takashi Murakami, Gordon Parks, and Jessie Willcox Smith, as well as numerous lesser-known creators.
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was created to honor humanity’s stories and the artists who illustrate them,” Lucas, who’s been collecting narrative art for half a century, said in a news release. “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.”
Two movie theaters offering continuous screenings as well as a research library, retail store, and restaurant round out the attractions inside, while the museum’s 13-acre campus boasts a park and gardens on what was formerly an asphalt parking lot. In them, over 300 trees, drought-resistant foliage, a hanging garden, a meadow, and an amphitheater offer the surrounding community a “much-needed” green space to engage with, per a news release.
Located in South LA’s Exposition Park, across from Lucas’ alma mater, the University of Southern California, the building cost the filmmaker an incredible $1 billion, reports say — far outstripping the estimated $100 million cost of Skywalker Ranch in Northern California’s Marin County, his 4,700-acre postproduction facility.
Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for seniors. Children 17 and under and active-duty military members enter free.
Keep scrolling to see more of what’s inside.
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