The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, will open in Los Angeles on 22 September with 18 inaugural exhibitions featuring over 1,200 objects. Curated by Lucas himself, the shows span media like photography, architecture, and cinema, as well as genres such as manga, anime, comics, and children's stories. Six solo exhibitions will highlight American artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Frazetta, and Norman Rockwell. The museum's collection now exceeds 40,000 works, including the Separate Cinema Archive and Lucas Archives of film memorabilia.
The opening marks the culmination of a decade-long, $1bn project that moved from San Francisco to Chicago before settling in Los Angeles's Exposition Park. It positions the Lucas Museum as a major new institution dedicated to narrative art, a category that bridges popular culture and fine art. The launch follows recent staff layoffs and the departure of director Sandra Jackson-Dumont, and it arrives in a year when Los Angeles is also opening LACMA's David Geffen Galleries and the AI art space Dataland, signaling a transformative moment for the city's cultural landscape.