Topline
George Lucas, the billionaire filmmaker behind massive franchises like “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones,” set an opening date of September 2026 for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a Los Angeles museum that will boast thousands of famous artworks and archival items from Lucas’s filmmaking career.
A drone view of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Key Facts
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art reportedly cost $1 billion, which Lucas funded, including the costs of construction, his art and an endowment of at least $400 million, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The museum will open to the public on Sept. 22, 2026, it announced Wednesday afternoon, more than a decade after Lucas first pitched the idea of constructing an art museum.
The art museum will span 300,000 square feet and house more than 40,000 works in its permanent collection, according to a press release, including works by artists like Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo and Beatrix Potter.
Costumes, props, concept art and more works from Lucas’s films will also be housed in the museum, and although the release did not note which films would be represented, Lucas is best known for writing, directing and producing the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” franchises, as well as the Oscar-nominated “American Graffiti.”
The museum will span 35 galleries, two theaters, a library, restaurant, retail store and green space in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park.
The museum features a futuristic design and has drawn comparisons to a spacecraft, and architect Kush Parekh, who worked on the project, previously told the Los Angeles Times the design was inspired by “landscapes of myths and movies” and taking visitors on a “journey through space.”
Key Background
Lucas reportedly first pitched the idea of an art museum in San Francisco in 2013 but was eventually rejected by the Presidio Trust, which oversees the city’s Presidio of San Francisco park. He then reportedly set sights on Chicago with the help of his wife, Mellody Hobson, CEO of the Chicago-based Ariel Investments, but Lucas abandoned the plan once preservationist group Friends of the Parks fought him in court. After reneging on Chicago, Hobson asked Lucas whether it was worth continuing the museum project, the Wall Street Journal reported, to which Lucas said: “I am building this museum in my lifetime!” He finally settled on Los Angeles in 2017 and broke ground in 2018, but the museum was held up by a series of delays, including a halt in construction during the COVID-19 pandemic and lingering delays over supply chain issues. Hobson again helped Lucas secure the Los Angeles location, the Journal reported, courting then-Mayor Eric Garcetti and framing the project as a positive for the community, which has 18 low-income schools in the surrounding area. Garcetti told the Los Angeles Times in 2017 the museum was to create tens of thousands of construction jobs and more than one thousand permanent jobs upon opening, which he called a “lowball” estimate. “People will visit from around the world to see the original Darth Vader mask and Norman Rockwell paintings,” Garcetti said.