George Lucas and Mellody Hobson hosted an opening-night gala Saturday for the 300,000-square-foot Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.
Star-Studded Opening Night Gala at Exposition Park
Hollywood figures and cultural leaders gathered on Saturday, September 19, 2026, for an early look inside the new museum. George Lucas hosted friends and collaborators including Oprah Winfrey, Guillermo del Toro, Laura Dern, Mark Hamill, Spike Lee, Greta Gerwig, Nicolas Cage, Tracee Ellis Ross, Queen Latifah, Eva Longoria, George R.R. Martin, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
The gala event was co-chaired by Julie Bell, Tom Cruise, Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Sir Lewis Hamilton, Jensen Huang, JR, Steven Spielberg, and Pharrell Williams. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the five-story museum is devoted to visual storytelling across cultures, centuries, and media, featuring works ranging from paintings, illustrations, and photography to comics, murals, and cinema.
The building sits on an 11-acre campus surrounded by a new 13-acre park and gardens designed by landscape architect Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA on land that was formerly an asphalt parking lot. The grounds include more than 300 newly planted trees, an amphitheater, a meadow, a hanging garden, and 10 monumental outdoor sculptures.
Galleries, Collections, and Exhibition Spaces
Its inaugural presentations display more than 1,300 works drawn from a collection that spans 40,000 pieces.
Represented creators include Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Frank Frazetta, Diego Rivera, Gordon Parks, Charles Schulz, Robert Crumb, and Judith F. Baca. The collections encompass familiar pieces by illustrators, 20th- and 21st-century mural paintings, deep and extensive holdings of comic art, children’s book illustrations, science-fiction illustrations, fantastic visions captured in 20th-century culture, and photography.
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was created to honor humanity’s stories and the artists who illustrate them,” George Lucas said earlier this month. “The artists in this collection didn’t just create images, they connected our modern imaginations with our ancient emotions — with common beliefs creating community. Their work spans genres, media, and time. They deserve to be in a museum.”
George Lucas, museum founder
Inside the Cinema Archives and Special Exhibitions
The museum houses the complete Lucas Archives spanning from 1971 to 2012. Visitors can view movie posters, documentaries featuring artists and filmmakers, and cinematic artifacts from classic productions.
An inaugural exhibition titled Star Wars in Motion
displays concept designs, props, and costumes associated with vehicles from the first six “Star Wars” films. Among the items on display are Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and the first physical build of General Grievous’ Wheel Bike.
“We wanted a museum unlike any other — one that brings people from every walk of life through the same doors,” Mellody Hobson said earlier this month. “That’s why this collection holds so many different kinds of stories: so that more people can walk in and, somewhere in these galleries, see themselves — and the world they know — reflected back.”
Mellody Hobson, museum co-founder
Architecture, Public Amenities, and Free Library Access
Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects with Stantec, the curving exterior is clad in more than 1,200 individually shaped panels beneath a central arch spanning 185 feet that rises above a public plaza.
Beyond its exhibition galleries and two theaters, the campus includes the Skywalker Grill, a full-service restaurant open to both museum visitors and the general public. The institution also houses a research library that is free to the public.
The research library holds more than 30,000 comic books, select holdings from the Skywalker Ranch Library, about 3,000 art books donated by Steve Martin and his wife, Ann Stringfield, and more than 2,900 volumes from the personal library of writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose work influenced Lucas’ creation of “Star Wars,” according to museum officials.
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