The skyline of L.A. is about to gain a new silhouette: a building shaped like a spaceship, rising in Exposition Park. This will house the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening in 2026, a bold effort to expand what we call “art” and shift how we tell location-based cultural stories.
More than Paintings on Wall
This museum, spearheaded by filmmaker George Lucas and his partner Mellody Hobson, aims to house narrative art in all forms illustration, comics, visual storytelling, film, photography, performance, and more. It’s built for visual language, not just static objects.
Its collection already includes the archive of Judy Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles, along with concept art from film and popular media. In positioning itself adjacent to other cultural hubs (MOCA, the Broad), it wants to be both a destination and a bridge inviting audiences who might enter through story rather than fine art.
L.A.’s Narrative Identity
What’s exciting is that Los Angeles is more than a backdrop for narratives it is narrative. The city that births Hollywood also carries untold stories of its communities: immigrant neighborhoods, mural traditions, protest histories, music lineages, and street culture. A museum of narrative art doesn’t just collect; it contextualizes.
The Lucas Museum’s arrival offers a chance to expand the canon: to recognize that the city’s lived stories graphic novels made by local artists, street murals in Boyle Heights, cinematic memory in South L.A. are as worthy as gallery-born abstractions.
In a city where image is commodity, narrative is resistance. The Lucas Museum aims to be the space where that tension can breathe, be interrogated, celebrated, and amplified.
