The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has unveiled the first exhibitions visitors will see when the long-awaited Los Angeles institution opens on Sept. 22, and the overall message is clear: this will not simply be a museum for \u201cStar Wars\u201d fans. The Los Angeles Times reported that the museum will debut with about 20 inaugural exhibitions spread across more than 30 galleries, featuring more than 1,200 objects drawn from the museum\u2019s founding collection and curated by George Lucas himself. While one exhibition will focus on cinema and include \u201cStar Wars\u201d memorabilia, the opening program is designed to be much broader, presenting a sweeping vision of narrative art across popular culture, illustration, comics, photography, painting, and mythic storytelling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That breadth is central to the museum\u2019s identity. The institution has a founding collection of more than 40,000 works and will display them inside a 300,000-square-foot building in Exposition Park, with over 100,000 square feet of gallery space. The museum was co-founded by Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, and was designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, with Stantec as executive architect. The surrounding landscape includes 11 acres of park space extending to the roof, designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. Altogether, the physical setting is meant to match the museum\u2019s expansive view of storytelling as an art form that belongs not only to elite institutions, but to everyday people and mass culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inaugural exhibitions reflect that philosophy. One of the opening shows will center on \u201cStar Wars\u201d artifacts, including large-scale vehicle installations, production designs, props, and costumes. But that is only one part of the opening lineup. Other exhibitions include \u201cEveryday Life,\u201d focused on visual stories about childhood, family, play, work, school, sports, and community, and \u201cCivic Life,\u201d devoted to portrayals of public experience in places such as courthouses, polling places, and political headquarters. Another show, \u201cNarrative Forms,\u201d explores storytelling across genres like fantasy, romance, adventure, and science fiction. These thematic shows are meant to connect very different artists and traditions through the common idea of how images carry stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The range of artists on display underscores how broadly the museum defines narrative art. Opening exhibitions will include works by Dorothea Lange, Norman Rockwell, Thomas Hart Benton, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Frank Frazetta, and Jessie Willcox Smith, alongside comics and graphic storytelling by figures such as M\u0153bius, Marie Severin, Jack Kirby, Alison Bechdel, Jim Lee, Frank Miller, and Rafael Navarro. Children\u2019s literature illustration will also be represented through artists like Beatrix Potter, Leo Politi, E.H. Shepard, and Jacob Lawrence. This mix suggests the museum is deliberately collapsing the usual boundary between \u201chigh art\u201d and popular narrative forms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The museum\u2019s stated purpose goes beyond showcasing famous names or Lucas\u2019 private interests. The institution said the exhibitions \u201ctrace the evolution of human culture through storytelling,\u201d ranging from ancient sculptures of gods and goddesses to Renaissance paintings, modern cinema, comics, and photography. Lucas has described his collection as \u201cthe people\u2019s art,\u201d and the inaugural program appears built around that idea: stories repeated across generations, in different media, reveal common themes of love, family, adventure, fantasy, and public life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In that sense, the Lucas Museum is positioning itself less as a niche fan destination and more as a large-scale argument about what museums should take seriously. Its opening exhibitions suggest that comic art, illustration, cinematic design, and popular storytelling deserve to stand beside more traditional museum objects. The result is an inaugural program that uses the draw of \u201cStar Wars\u201d and George Lucas\u2019 name to invite people into a much wider history of narrative image-making. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has unveiled the first exhibitions visitors will see when the long-awaited Los Angeles institution opens on Sept. 22, and the overall message is clear: this will not simply be a museum for \u201cStar Wars\u201d fans. The Los Angeles Times reported that the museum will debut with about 20 inaugural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9427,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9425\/revisions\/9427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}