George Lucas’ Starship-like L.A. museum prepares for lift-off

It’s been a long time in the making, but Los Angeles’ new mega museum, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, billed as a first-of-its-kind institution showcasing storytelling through images, opens its doors to the public on 22nd September, nearly two decades after film director George Lucas first conceived the project.

The $1bn museum is the passion project of Lucas – the filmmaker who revolutionised modern cinema by creating Star Wars (1977) and co-creating Indiana Jones, as well as directing breakout movies such as American Graffiti – and the American businesswoman Mellody Hobson.

Designed by starchitect Ma Yansong of Mad Architects with Stantec, the building resembles a futuristic intergalactic starship that has landed in the city. Hovering above the skyline in Exposition Park, it accommodates 100,000 square feet of gallery space across 30-plus galleries.

Inside Lucas’ mothership,  a visual history unfolds across cultures and centuries — from prehistoric cave paintings to illustration, comics, cinema and murals. Inaugural exhibitions include The History of Narrative Art: Heroes, Myths, The Sacred, on the first floor of the building, which explores how visual storytelling has produced mythologies that inspired devotion and forged societies featuring monumental reproductions of artworks, architecture and archaeological sites from around the world. 

Many of these exhibits were produced in collaboration with institutions, sites and governments around the world: the Vatican Museums for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Louvre for the Winged Human-Headed Bulls from the Palace of Sargon II, the National Museum and Research Center of Altamira in Spain for ancient cave paintings, and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia for the Aztec Sun Stone.

There are, of course, homages to film. The Cinema gallery’s first show presents Star Wars in Motion, showcasing concept designs, props and costumes associated with the films' high-speed racers, hulking transports, and flying vessels: from Luke’s Landspeeder in A New Hope (1977) to the first physical build of General Grevious’s Wheel Bike in Revenge of the Sith (2005).

Artists are honoured on the fifth and fourth floors where the exhibits represent diverse talents, ranging from Vincent van Gogh, George Bellows and Jacob Lawrence to Beatrix Potter, Charles White, and Ernie Barnes.

Other exhibitions are devoted to specific genres of storytelling – fantasy, romance, adventure  – and feature works by artists including Georges Méliès, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell and Ken Kelly. 

There are also presentations of comic books, manga, graphic novels, photography, and murals, which include artists such as George Herriman, Charles Schulz, Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Takashi Murakami, Robert Capa, Gordon Parks, Diego Rivera, JR and Judith F. Baca.

American artists who were among the giants of 20th-century illustration - from Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth to Jessie Willcox Smith, Maxfield Parrish, Frank Frazetta and Thomas Hart Benton  –  are also spotlighted in the inaugural shows within individual galleries.

Two dedicated  theatres: the Robert Flaherty Theater and the Slavko Vorkapich Theater, create continuous, drop-in gallery experiences, with films ranging from a few minutes to 90 minutes in length.