Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening: what's inside the $1 billion building — Star Wars props, Frida Kahlo and 30,000 comics
Sixteen years, three cities, one very public breakup with San Francisco and Chicago, and roughly a billion dollars later, George Lucas's museum is finally, actually open. The man himself sounds like he barely survived it.
"This one almost broke my will," Lucas said at the opening, which is a remarkable statement from someone who once survived the Phantom Menace press tour. "It's taken so long to get here."
What's actually in there
The building alone is worth the trip: a 300,000-square-foot Ma Yansong spaceship-cloud hovering over Exposition Park on 1,200 individually shaped panels, like someone parked Cloud City next to the Coliseum. Inside, more than 1,300 works across 30-plus galleries, and the range is, frankly, unhinged in the best way:
- Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Norman Rockwell, Gordon Parks and a Banksy, hanging in the same institution as Jim Lee and Frank Miller originals
- "Star Wars in Motion": Luke's landspeeder, General Grievous's Wheel Bike, and original concept art from the first six films
- Recreations of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Altamira cave paintings and the Aztec Sun Stone, because narrative art apparently starts at "cave" and ends at "wookiee"
- Beatrix Potter and Charles Schulz illustrations for the children, or let's be honest, for you
- A free research library with 30,000-plus comic books and Joseph Campbell's personal collection
- A rooftop restaurant called — of course — the Skywalker Grill
Tickets are $25 for adults, free for anyone under 18, and the 13-acre park around it costs nothing at all.
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The gala was a fever dream
The opening night guest list read like the Academy accidentally hit "select all": Oprah, Spielberg, Coppola, Pacino, De Niro, Harrison Ford, DiCaprio, Christopher Nolan, Kim Kardashian, with Tom Cruise, Greta Gerwig and Pharrell as co-chairs. Queen Latifah told the room it was "witnessing history."
Mellody Hobson — Lucas's wife and the museum's co-funder — pitched LA as an "artistic equal to the Louvre in Paris and the Met in New York," which is a hell of a bar to set for a building with a landspeeder in it. And honestly? It might clear it.
