Lucas Museum of Narrative Art: Los Angeles Gets a New Home for Visual Storytelling
On September 22, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will open in Los Angeles. Founded by George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, the museum is taking shape in Exposition Park after a long and complicated journey: initially envisioned for San Francisco and later Chicago, the project has taken more than sixteen years to come to fruition, with a total investment estimated at around $1 billion. Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, with Stantec serving as executive architect, the 300,000-square-foot building houses more than 30 galleries and approximately 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, within a 13-acre campus completed by a park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. The inaugural exhibitions feature more than 1,300 works drawn from a founding collection of over 40,000 objects assembled by Lucas over five decades.
For industry professionals, the most significant aspect is not so much the scale of the project as the museum’s definition of “narrative art”: painting, illustration, comics, photography, murals, and cinema are treated as expressions of the same visual tradition, without the conventional hierarchy between fine art and popular culture. Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera share space with comic book artists, illustrators, and materials from the Lucasfilm archives. Cinema, in particular, has a dedicated presence from opening day: the inaugural exhibition Star Wars in Motion traces the first six chapters of the saga through concept art, costumes, vehicles, and original props, from Luke’s Landspeeder in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope to the first physical model of General Grievous’s Wheel Bike from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
The museum’s relationship with the moving image continues in its two 299-seat theaters, the Robert Flaherty Theater, dedicated to documentary film, and the Slavko Vorkapich Theater, focused on editing, light, and cinematic rhythm, both designed for continuous screenings. The museum also features a free Research Library that incorporates holdings from the former Lucasfilm Research Library at Skywalker Ranch and more than 2,900 volumes from the personal library of mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose thinking on the “hero’s journey” directly influenced the writing of Star Wars. This connection makes the collection a tangible resource for professionals working in screenwriting and narrative development. In a city built around the image-making industry, the new museum represents another sign of the growing convergence of cinema, comics, illustration, and digital culture within a single visual ecosystem.
Source: Lucas Museum Press
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On September 22, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will open in Los Angeles. Founded by George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, the museum is taking shape in Exposition Park after a long and complicated journey: initially envisioned for San Francisco and later Chicago, the project has taken more than sixteen years to come to fruition, with a total investment estimated at around $1 billion. Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, with Stantec serving as executive architect, the 300,000-square-foot building houses more than 30 galleries and approximately 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, within a 13-acre campus completed by a park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. The inaugural exhibitions feature more than 1,300 works drawn from a founding collection of over 40,000 objects assembled by Lucas over five decades.
For industry professionals, the most significant aspect is not so much the scale of the project as the museum’s definition of “narrative art”: painting, illustration, comics, photography, murals, and cinema are treated as expressions of the same visual tradition, without the conventional hierarchy between fine art and popular culture. Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera share space with comic book artists, illustrators, and materials from the Lucasfilm archives. Cinema, in particular, has a dedicated presence from opening day: the inaugural exhibition Star Wars in Motion traces the first six chapters of the saga through concept art, costumes, vehicles, and original props, from Luke’s Landspeeder in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope to the first physical model of General Grievous’s Wheel Bike from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
The museum’s relationship with the moving image continues in its two 299-seat theaters, the Robert Flaherty Theater, dedicated to documentary film, and the Slavko Vorkapich Theater, focused on editing, light, and cinematic rhythm, both designed for continuous screenings. The museum also features a free Research Library that incorporates holdings from the former Lucasfilm Research Library at Skywalker Ranch and more than 2,900 volumes from the personal library of mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose thinking on the “hero’s journey” directly influenced the writing of Star Wars. This connection makes the collection a tangible resource for professionals working in screenwriting and narrative development. In a city built around the image-making industry, the new museum represents another sign of the growing convergence of cinema, comics, illustration, and digital culture within a single visual ecosystem.
Source: Lucas Museum Press
Share:
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