The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles is entering its final weeks of construction, with the MAD-designed landmark preparing to open its doors to the public on September 22, 2026. The 300,000-square-foot institution stretches across an 11-acre campus in Exposition Park, lifting its long, curving volume above gardens planted with more than 200 trees. The five-story building brings together 100,000 square feet of galleries with two cinematic theaters, a library, education spaces, dining areas, and a rooftop venue.
George Lucas and Mellody Hobson co-founded the museum around a collection of more than 40,000 works, ranging from painting and illustration to comics, photography, cinematic artifacts, and digital media. Lucas, who also serves as the museum's curator, described the institution's mission in simple terms. «Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life,» he said. Hobson added that the museum seeks to be «a museum of the people's art,» reflecting visitors' own experiences.
Led by Ma Yansong, the team at MAD replaces right angles with fluid, organic geometries in the museum's design, shaping its sculptural form with over 1,500 uniquely molded fiberglass-reinforced polymer panels. As it arches across the site with cloud-like massing and deep cantilevers, the building contrasts with its more conventional neighbors in Exposition Park. A 56-meter-long central archway spans a public plaza and forms the entry point of the museum, while above it, a four-story elliptical oculus cuts through the volume and gallery spaces, visually linking the park and sky.
In many ways, the Los Angeles museum seems to levitate, with its form touching the ground at just a few strategic points, allowing for openness and lightness despite its massive scale. This illusion of floating is engineered with seismic resilience in mind, with one meter of lateral space allowing it to «roll» during an earthquake, what the former CEO of the museum, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, once described as «a giant roller skate» built for the realities of LA's tectonic landscape.
Mia Lehrer and Studio-MLA have transformed the former asphalt parking lots into gardens that pass below the museum and climb onto its roof. Paths move between planted landforms, open meadows, shaded gathering areas, and an amphitheater, allowing the campus to function as public space beyond museum hours. Native and drought-tolerant planting responds to Los Angeles's climate, while the landforms draw from California's varied geography. The campus captures rainwater for irrigation, and a waterfall-like fountain assists with renewable cooling. Solar panels share the roof with trees and low planting, turning the upper surface of the building into another piece of landscape.
Inside, the museum's thirty-five galleries are organized around stories and experiences rather than a single chronology. Its inaugural exhibitions will place more than 1,200 objects across over 30 galleries, moving between ancient imagery and contemporary visual culture. Works by Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Diego Rivera, and Judith F. Baca will appear alongside comics by Jack Kirby, Alison Bechdel, Mœbius, Frank Miller, and R. Crumb. Other rooms will explore children's illustration, manga, photography, science fiction, and stories of the American West. Props and costumes from the Lucas Archives will extend the collection into cinema.
Several galleries focus on subjects including childhood, family, work, play, community, and adventure. Others concentrate on individual artists or particular forms of image-making. An exhibition devoted to architecture will examine the designs that informed the museum itself, turning attention back toward the building visitors are moving through. The museum's broad definition of narrative art brings familiar popular imagery into the same institution as painting, murals, and historical objects. The completed building gives that premise an unusually prominent home, with its galleries suspended above a public landscape in the center of South Los Angeles.