The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened to the public on September 22, 2026, on 13 acres at the edge of Exposition Park. Ma Yansong of MAD Architects designed it as a long, pale, curving form that lifts off the ground on one side, with a planted roof that rises in two green hills. It looks less like a museum than a landform.
What narrative art means here
The museum's organising idea is that art which tells a story is one subject, from cave painting to the screen. In practice that puts Artemisia Gentileschi, Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo in the same building as Robert Colescott, the fantasy painter Frank Frazetta, the cartoonist Robert Crumb and the complete Lucas Archives from 1971 to 2012. A conventional art museum would split those across departments, or leave some out. Here the question is what a work says, not where it would normally hang.
What is inside
There are more than 30 galleries and more than 1,300 works on view. The first floor holds The History of Narrative Art: Heroes, Myths and the Sacred, which uses reproductions of works and sites, among them the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Aztec Sun Stone, to set the idea out. The fourth and fifth floors take the subject by theme, medium and genre.
Star Wars in Motion looks at the land vehicles from the first six films. The mural gallery brings together Judith F. Baca, Diego Rivera, JR and Banksy, four artists who use walls and public space to tell a story.
A museum that treats a Rockwell, a Kahlo and a film archive as one long story.
What is free
The distinction is worth knowing before going. The landscaped grounds and gardens, by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA and holding ten monumental sculptures, are free. So is the Research Library. The galleries need a timed ticket, booked through the museum's website.
The museum is closed on Tuesdays and its hours differ by day, so check the current hours at lucasmuseum.org before setting out.
