Aerial view of Lucas Museum construction, July 2025 JAKS Productions. Image © Sand Hill Media/Eric Furie
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https://www.archdaily.com/1036001/lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-by-mad-architects-set-to-open-september-2026-in-los-angeles
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has announced that it will open to the public on September 22, 2026, adding a new cultural institution to Los Angeles‘s Exposition Park. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum is dedicated to illustrated and narrative storytelling, understood as visual works that communicate stories across media and periods. The building is designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, with landscape architecture by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA and Stantec serving as executive architect.
Aerial view of Lucas Museum construction, July 2025 JAKS Productions. Image © Sand Hill Media/Eric FurieLocated on an 11-acre site formerly used as surface parking, the project comprises a 300,000-square-foot structure and new public green spaces. MAD‘s design continues the practice’s exploration of curving, sculptural forms, expressed here through an elevated volume that spans much of the site and creates shaded areas at ground level. The building accommodates thirty-five galleries totaling 100,000 square feet, alongside two theaters, a library, community and education spaces, a cafe, a restaurant, and a museum store. The surrounding landscape introduces pathways, planting, and outdoor gathering areas that connect the museum with the wider Exposition Park campus.
Aerial view of Lucas Museum park, June 2025 JAKS Productions. Image © Sand Hill Media/Eric Furie
The museum‘s permanent collection includes more than 40,000 works of narrative art. The holdings span illustration, painting, muralism, comic art, children’s book imagery, science-fiction illustration, and photography, as well as cinematic artifacts. Among the represented practitioners are artists such as Norman Rockwell, Kadir Nelson, Jessie Willcox Smith, N. C. Wyeth, Beatrix Potter, Judith F. Baca, Frida Kahlo, and Maxfield Parrish; comic artists including Winsor McCay, Jack Kirby, Frank Frazetta, Alison Bechdel, Chris Ware, and Robert Crumb; and photographers Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Dorothea Lange.
Related Article MAD Architects’ Lucas Museum Reveals Latest Construction Details 
Lucas Museum construction, February 2025 JAKS Productions. Image © Roberto Gomez Courtesy of USC School of Cinematic Arts
Galleries are organized around broad themes related to the human experience, such as family, work, community, play, and adventure, rather than strictly chronological or medium-based groupings. The institution also plans to present documentaries and moving-image material related to artists and filmmakers, situating individual works within wider narratives of production and reception.
Within Exposition Park, the museum joins an existing network of cultural and educational institutions, including the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California African American Museum, and the California Science Center. Scheduled to open in 2026, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art combines a large-scale collection focused on storytelling with an architectural intervention in one of Los Angeles‘ key cultural districts.
Aerial view of Lucas Museum construction, July 2025 JAKS Productions. Image © Sand Hill Media/Eric FurieIn other related developments, BIG’s Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art is nearing completion along Suzhou’s Jinji Lake waterfront, while the Studio Museum in Harlem is set to open its new purpose-built building on November 15. In Cairo, the Grand Egyptian Museum fully opened to the public, marking the end of a decades-long construction process. Meanwhile, new photographs by Iwan Baan offer an early look at the David Geffen Galleries at LACMA.