George Lucas Opens Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES — When the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens its doors to the public on September 22, visitors expecting a shrine to “Star Wars” may be surprised by what they find. According to AP News, the saga George Lucas spawned represents just one small corner of the galaxy of creative work housed within the nearly 300,000-square-foot institution in Exposition Park.

“‘Star Wars’ only occupies 7% of the museum, actually,” museum CEO Tracey Bates told the Associated Press.

A Temple to the People’s Art

The museum, which Lucas has called a “temple to the people’s art,” is dedicated to what he terms “narrative art” — visual storytelling that encompasses illustration, comic art, children’s book imagery, science fiction art, and other forms often marginalized by traditional art museums. The mission, Bates explained, is to give “incredibly familiar pieces” 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.”

The 82-year-old filmmaker made an unannounced appearance at a media preview on September 2 alongside his wife, Mellody Hobson, the museum’s co-founder. Wearing a T-shirt that read “Dedicated to the people’s art,” Lucas reflected on the museum’s 17-year journey to completion.

“Part of the problem is that I’m a contrarian. I don’t like to do things people think can be done,” he said. “I’m used to doing the impossible. This one almost broke me.”

From Comic Strips to a Cultural Landmark

The museum’s collection of approximately 40,000 works began with Lucas’s college-era purchases of original comic art from newspaper strips like “Alley Oop,” when such pieces could be had for pocket change. When blockbuster money from the “Star Wars” franchise started flowing, he expanded into paintings by commercial artists including Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish — artists once deemed the height of uncool by the art establishment.

Nearly everything in the museum’s 100,000 square feet of gallery space comes from the personal collections of Lucas and Hobson, a major collector of African-American art. Hobson said Lucas “wanted to celebrate the illustrators who have often been underappreciated for their contributions, those who have narrated our lives in pictures, often using a single frame to tell a story.”

Rockwell Treated Like Renoir

Central to the museum’s mission is elevating populist painters to the same level of reverence as fine art masters. The Rockwell gallery gives special prominence to “The Problem We All Live With,” the painter’s 1964 rendering of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old Black girl surrounded by federal marshals as she walked into an all-white New Orleans school in 1960.

Senior curator Ryan Linkof, who joined the museum in 2018, admitted he initially knew only the consensus view of Rockwell as a painter of quaint Americana. “Working here I really just grew to absolutely love the work and find him as an image-maker, him as an artist, him as the figure, the cultural icon, just to be incredibly sophisticated,” he said.

Bates echoed that sentiment: “He’s one of the greatest storytellers of our lifetime, really. I mean the level of nuance and depth in a Rockwell, I get lost in them constantly.”

An Architectural Marvel

The building itself, designed by architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, has drawn widespread praise. Ma, whose firm was selected in 2014, described the structure as “like a cloud or like a tree canopy that’s floating above you.” The five-level building sits on an 11-acre site adjacent to Lucas’s alma mater, the University of Southern California, and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

“We designed an architectural space with emotion,” Ma said. “We want to see people’s reaction to those spaces.”

Visitors will be greeted by a bright yellow Naboo N-1 Starfighter from “The Phantom Menace” suspended in the lobby of the three-level public research library. The opening exhibit, “Star Wars in Motion,” features production versions of Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi.”

Beyond the Galaxy

The museum’s galleries extend far beyond Lucas’s own creations. Dedicated spaces showcase the sword-and-sandal fantasy art of Frank Frazetta, the ethereal landscapes of Maxfield Parrish — described by Linkof as “a little sanctuary, a little chapel” — and comic art ranging from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to proto-”Peanuts” panels by Charles Schulz and edgier alt-comic work from Robert Crumb.

A children’s section features Eloise illustrations by Hilary Knight, a Pikachu painting modeled on a Van Gogh self-portrait, and rooms full of anime and manga imagery. The museum also includes work from higher-brow artists including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Andy Warhol. If it tells a story, it has a place.

Many galleries are organized thematically rather than by artist or era, examining subjects like sports, civic activism, community, and childhood. “We’re interested in the stories that they’re telling, rather than these kind of somewhat artificial categories defined by discipline,” Linkof said. “The gorgeous idea of these myths, myths of everyday life, the stories that we tell ourselves.”

A Long and Contentious Journey

The museum’s path to Los Angeles was anything but smooth. Originally proposed for San Francisco’s Crissy Field in 2013, the project faced unsuccessful negotiations with The Presidio Trust. Chicago was announced as the host city in 2014, but fierce opposition from the preservation group Friends of the Parks led to years of legal battles before Lucas withdrew in June 2016. Los Angeles was announced as the final location in January 2017, with groundbreaking taking place in March 2018.

The project, estimated to cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, has been funded entirely by Lucas and Hobson. Admission is $25 for adults, with visitors under 18 admitted free.

Looking Ahead

As the museum prepares to welcome its first visitors, questions remain about its long-term impact. Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics praising the architecture while questioning the lack of curatorial context in the galleries. The museum’s staffing journey has also been turbulent, with several high-profile departures in recent years.

But for Lucas, the opening represents the culmination of a vision decades in the making. In an ARTnews report, CEO Tracey Bates affirmed that Lucas “has always been the chief curator,” and that “the planning, the mission, vision and values of this organization have never changed.” The museum’s purpose, she told the AP, is to give the art that surrounds us every day — from newspaper photographs to comic books to movie posters — the platform it deserves.

“The largest, most popular form of narrative art is cinema,” Bates said. “So what better space for it to be than the home of storytelling?”

With its public opening just weeks away, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art stands ready to welcome visitors into what Lucas calls “the people’s art” — a celebration of the visual stories that have shaped our collective imagination.