From afar, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rises up like a spaceship, much like other buildings from MAD Architects’ (MAD) portfolio. The museum, topped with a sprawling green roof and lawns to boot, will open to the public on September 22, 2026, museum officials shared this week. Designed by Ma Yansong, founder of MAD, and Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA, the Lucas Museum is slated to redefine Exposition Park in Los Angeles.
This week’s announcement comes after a series of delays. Construction broke ground on the Lucas Museum in 2018, and the $1 billion venue was supposed to open in 2021. But COVID-19 threw a wrench in those plans. The Lucas Museum then said it would open in 2023, but supply chain problems stemming from the pandemic got in the way. The opening was pushed back a third time, to 2025.
Now, Lucas Museum officials are confident the highly anticipated building will open this upcoming September. “Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life,” Lucas shared, after the new opening date was publicized.
The museum’s exterior is defined by 1,500 curved glass-fiber-reinforced-polymer panels. Landscape design by Studio-MLA delivered an amphitheater, a hanging garden, and pedestrian bridge.
Cofounded by Star Wars director George Lucas and author Mellody Hobson, the 100,000-square-foot museum will contain more than 40,000 artworks spread throughout 35 galleries. (Lucas and Hobson are married.) In addition to gallery spaces, the museum will also have two theaters, classrooms, restaurants, retail, event space, and more.
Visitors will enjoy paintings by Norman Rockwell, Beatrix Potter, Frida Kahlo, and others. There will be comic art by Winsor McCay, Jack Kirby, Frank Frazetta, Alison Bechdel, Chris Ware, and R. Crumb; and photographs by Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Dorothea Lange.
“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,” Hobson shared in a statement. “Our hope is that as people move through the galleries, they will see themselves, and their humanity, reflected back.”
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