George Lucas’ Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is officially set to open on Sept. 22, 2026 following a nearly four-year delay.
The $1 billion museum, which the “Star Wars” creator founded alongside his wife, author and businesswoman, Mellody Hobson, was created to recognize illustrated storytelling. MAD Architects founder Ma Yansong designed the 300,000-square-foot institution. The news was shared with media on Wednesday.
The 11-acre museum will feature 35 galleries and a permanent collection of more than 40,000 works, some of which will include artwork by various artists including Jessie Willcox Smith, Norman Rockwell, N. C. Wyeth, Beatrix Potter and more. Comic art icons Jack Kirby, Chris Ware and Alison Bechdel, along with photographers Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange will also have displays of their work in the museum.
And of course, Lucas will have his own personal showcase called Lucas Archives, which will feature concept art, models, props and costumes from Lucas’ career.
“Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life,” Lucas said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “The museum was built on the belief that illustrated storytelling is a universal language.”
The museum sits adjacent to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park. Its construction first started in 2018, but it slowed down on building when the COVID pandemic hit. Its opening was postponed again in 2022, to 2025, following global supply-chain issues.
As TheWrap previously reported, the museum laid off 15 full-time employees, or 14% of its staff, back in May in an effort to open as scheduled in 2026.
The layoffs came after the April departure of the museum’s director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who had led the project for five years. According to the Times, Lucas “did not seem engaged” in the education and public programming that Jackson-Dumont had planned.
