In 2026, Los Angeles will welcome a new landmark in Exposition Park—a shimmering, biomorphic vessel lifted above green gardens and plazas. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, will be more than another museum. It’s a cultural experiment: a place where paintings, comics, photography, cinema, and digital art all converge to tell the stories that shape us.
“The stories that art tells are often key to understanding a society and its aspirations,” Lucas has said. This idea underpins the museum’s mission: to show how narrative art connects us, challenges us, and offers ways to imagine a more empathetic world.
A Mission Beyond the Screen
Photos Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
Lucas, the filmmaker who gave the world Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and Hobson, a powerhouse investor and philanthropist, pledged their collections as a seed gift—spanning Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Carrie Mae Weems. Add to that the complete Lucasfilm Archives: costumes, props, and storyboards from films that changed modern cinema.
The museum’s Chief Curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas explains that narrative art isn’t limited by medium. “It can connect people across cultures and times,” she says, citing works ranging from Diego Rivera’s murals to contemporary photography by Cara Romero. In her hands, a Rockwell painting might hang across from a comic book panel or a digital installation, each piece sparking dialogue about how stories mirror society.
A Staff of Storytellers
Photos Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
Behind the vision is a team with deep cultural credentials. Jim Gianopulos, longtime studio head behind Titanic, Avatar, and Top Gun: Maverick, now leads as CEO. Laela French, keeper of the Lucasfilm Archives, ensures fans will see the lightsabers, costumes, and models that defined a galaxy far, far away. Together with curators like Dr. Ryan Linkof, who bridges film history and photography, the staff shapes a museum as committed to scholarship as it is to spectacle.
Architecture as Imagination
Designed by Ma Yansong/MAD Architects, the 300,000-square-foot building looks like a futuristic ship floating above 11 acres of new parkland. With 100,000 square feet of gallery space, two state-of-the-art theaters, a library, classrooms, rooftop gardens, and a waterfall-like fountain, the campus is equal parts urban park and cultural sanctuary. Its seismic base isolation system ensures safety, while solar cells and rain-harvesting integrate sustainability into its skin.
Why It Matters
Photos Courtesy Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
For Lucas and Hobson, the museum isn’t just a tribute to their collections. It’s a civic act. It gives Los Angeles—already home to global storytelling industries—a new public forum for examining how images and stories shape identity. “We hope the Lucas Museum will help audiences better understand the world and build toward a more just and empathetic society,” Lucas said.
As the countdown to 2026 begins, the Lucas Museum is poised to be both a destination and a dialogue—where the line between blockbuster and brushstroke, myth and memory, dissolves into a shared story about us all. www.lucasmuseum.org
