George Lucas’ Museum Gets An Opening Date Next Fall

(Image courtesy of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, will open next fall on Sept. 22, after a winding 12-year journey brought the massive, billion-dollar project to central Los Angeles.

“This is a museum of the people’s art—the images are illustrations of beliefs we live with every day. For that reason, this art belongs to everyone,” said Hobson in a statement. “Our hope is that as people move through the galleries, they will see themselves, and their humanity, reflected back.”

Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars universe as well as such films as American Graffiti and co-creator of the Indiana Jones franchise, originally publicly proposed the project in 2013 to the trust overseeing conversion of the former Presidio military base in San Francisco.

He has spoken of wanting the museum to showcase the kinds of popular art that get overlooked in fine art museums. The Lucas Museum’s permanent holdings will include 40,000 works, including magazine illustrations, murals, comic art, children’s books, science-fiction and fantasy imagery, movie posters, and more.

“Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life,” Lucas said.

At one point, the museum was headed to Chicago for a lakefront home near Soldier Field, but plans there fell through, and Los Angeles’ seemingly long-shot bid came through. Groundbreaking on the project started in March of 2018, on a site south of downtown Los Angeles.

The massive twin saucers of the museum slowly risen in the years since, built on former parking lots immediately west of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. The Exposition Park neighborhood also is home to the main campus of the University of Southern California, whose football team plays in the Coliseum, as well as several other museums and BMO Stadium, where MLS’ Los Angeles FC plays.

The museum will feature 35 galleries – organized by themes such as “love, family, comunity, play, work, sports” and more – covering 100,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space. The museum was designed by Ma Yansong of MD, with surrounding gardens designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA.

Estimates of the costs for construction, acquisitions of the permanent collections have ranged from $1 billion to $1.5 billion, given interruptions by the pandemic, other delays and expenses.

Lucas sold Lucasfilm Ltd. – his collection of Star Wars and other assets that included the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, visual-effects house Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, and game maker LucasArts – to Walt Disney Corp. in 2012 for slightly more than $4 billion in cash and stock. About half the purchase price came in Disney stock,. which at the time was roughly a third of current share prices.