The new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which announced that its grand opening will take place on September 22, 2026, has just provided an overview of its inaugural exhibition. Located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, the museum was founded by the famous Star Wars filmmaker, George Lucas.

At San Diego’s Comic-Con in 2025, Lucas showcased images and an ethos for what he called “a temple to the people’s art.”

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

The futuristic-looking building that will house the collection was designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects. Beyond personally housing George Lucas’ personal trove of Star Wars treasures, the approximately 30 galleries will include more than 1,200 objects that aim to tell the story of the evolution of humanity’s image-based storytelling culture. The collection includes a wide range of art, including ancient sculptures, Renaissance paintings, photographs, and comics.

Founded by both Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, includes two different types of exhibitions: thematic galleries that focus on ideas like love, family, work, and community, and galleries highlighting individual artists of the 20th century.

“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art explores how artists depict the essential myths that help us make sense of the world,” the museum said in a statement. “These shared stories, told over and over in many forms, bind us together and define our human experience.”

The museum includes Lucas’s own collection of more than 40,000 works of illustrator art that he’s collected over half a century. There are book illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, neo-Classical work by Maxfield Parrish, depictions of everyday American life by Norman Rockwell and Thomas Hart Benton, and the fairy book visions of Jessie Willcox Smith. Iconic paintings by Frank Frazetta, the fantasy art master, will also be on view, including his 1970 masterpiece, A Princess of Mars.

Some spaces in the museum include children’s stories, such as the illustrations of Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit), E.H. Shepard (Winnie-the-Pooh), and Jacob Lawrence (Harriet and the Promised Land). Comics and graphic novels include works from artists and creators such as Jack Kirby (co-creator of Captain America and X-Men), Frank Miller (Sin City), Mœbius (Alien), and Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), among many others. The museum is also displaying works of manga and anime.

Among the large-scale murals and photography on display will be pieces by Judy Baca, JR, Diego Rivera, Robert Capa, Gordon Parks, and Dorothea Lange. Other spaces have been set aside to house Lucas’s archives of props, sets, and costumes.