A force to reckon with

May 4th is considered a commemorative ‘Star Wars’ Day, so today we look at the new museum filmmaker George Lucas and his wife are building next to the L.A. Coliseum. It will open in 2026.

Dynamic duo: For filmmaker George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments, collecting art is a shared passion. Prior to their 2013 marriage, Hobson had been building a collection focused on contemporary African American works, including pieces by Kara Walker, Gary Simmons and Norman Lewis. Lucas has spent four-plus decades collecting American art.

Other new L.A. museums

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, estimated cost: $650 million

The Academy of Motion Pictures and Science Museum, estimated cost: $388 million

The building features an elevator, in the rendering above, ascending from the transparent glass museum lobby. As visitors begin a journey through the sculptural space, distorted reflections will follow guests cinematically as they transition from reality into the world of narrative art.

What the museum calls narrative art

Narrative art is created to represent stories through images. Narrative art appears in many forms, from cave drawings and hieroglyphics to paintings, murals, illustration, comics and sculpture. Narrative art has proliferated in photography, magazine and book illustration, film and digital media, addressing wide audiences and reminding them of the myths and stories that influence everyday life.

The Lucas Museum goal is to show how narrative art influences societies — shaping beliefs, communicating values, inspiring imagination and creating communities. The collection includes works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish and Kadir Nelson; comic artists such as Winsor McCay, Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby and Robert Crumb; muralists such as Judith F. Baca and Diego Rivera; photographers including Dorothea Lange and Carrie Mae Weems; chroniclers of African American life including Jacob Lawrence and Charles White; seminal works by artists including Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi and Robert Colescott; and cinematic archives.

You can see more images of the museum’s gallery here.

You can see more renderings and images of construction here.

The museum reaches to 115 feet in total height with four-story, raised up amorphous legs. The LMNA includes two levels of parking below the museum and a separate below-ground parking structure with up to three levels of parking located south of the museum building.

The architects define the exterior of the building as smooth and organic, reflecting the surrounding neighborhoods and landscape. The reflection of the metal is intended to enhance the visitor’s experience.

Architectural facts

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is an 11-acre campus with a landscape consisting of trees, gardens, walkways and architectural features that surround a nearly 300,000-square-foot building on a site that was formerly an asphalt parking lot in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. The five-story museum includes 100,000 square feet of gallery space, two state-of-the-art theaters, a café and a restaurant, and retail and special events spaces. The greenery of the landscape is expected to include a hanging garden, an amphitheater, a pedestrian bridge and a waterfall-like fountain.

The museum is privately funded and expected to coast about $1 billion by completion.

The architectural vision for the building was created by Ma Yansong/MAD Architects. The park and gardens were created by Mia Lehrer of Los Angeles’s Studio-MLA and Michael Siegel of Stantec, who is the executive architect. The impact of how much water will be used to maintain the park has not been released.

Founders: George Lucas and Mellody Hobson

Architect selection: July 2014

Los Angeles site selection: January 2017

Groundbreaking: March 2018

Topping out: March 2021

Opening: 2026

All images Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and the Los Angeles City Planning Commission