In Los Angeles, the George Lucas museum will not open until 2026

A little more patience… First planned for 2021, then 2023, then 2025, the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art de Los Angelesdedicated to the art collection of filmmaker George Lucas, famous creator of the saga Star Warshas just been postponed a third time. Located in the vast Exhibition Park of the City of Angels, this immense spaceship should therefore be inaugurated not in a few days or weeks as expected, but in a year, in 2026.

After an architectural competition launched in 2014, its construction started in 2018 had been slowed down by the Covid pandemic, which had hampered the pace of work and the supply of materials. But the museum, which simply and discreetly changed the year of opening on its site, did not communicate on the reasons for this third postponementthree years after the health crisis.

A long-awaited museum dedicated to “narrative art”

100,000 works of “narrative art” from all over the world and of all genres (painting, photography, comics, etc.) dating from Antiquity to the present day.

Created by George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, this ambitious establishment will be “not a cinema museum” but, more broadly, a “museum of visual arts” which will go far beyond the universe of Star Wars. Even if it will contain the entire archives ofIndiana Jones and of Star Wars (with preparatory drawings and original mask of Darth Vader), these elements will be mixed with the director’s extensive art collection : 100,000 works of “narrative art” from all over the world and of all genres (painting, photography, comics, etc.) dating from Antiquity to the present day.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art bills itself as “the first museum to focus on storytelling through images.” According to George Lucas, “narrative art” is “an art that tells stories and which, by summoning our imagination, can transform our vision of the world”. More precisely, he “tells the history of a society and common beliefs which keep it united,” he adds on the museum website.

Directed by Sandra Jackson-Dumontcoming from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the establishment will house a wide variety of works : an artifact from ancient Egypt dated 2,200 BC will sit alongside works by Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Frida Kahlo, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Norman Rockwell, and Shepard Fairey, as well as that 37,000 objects documenting the history of African-American cinema.

More than 10 years after the launch of this titanic project

Designed by popular Chinese architect Ma Yansong, this green building extending over two wings and 28 000 m²including 9,300 m² of exhibition space, displays a futuristic silhouette with undulating lines in polymer and fiberglass, like a spaceship invaded by vegetation. It will also offer, from its top floor and its roof garden, a spectacular view of Los Angeles.

The immaculate interior with voluptuous curves will evoke an immense futuristic cave where three impressive cylindrical glass elevators will launch. The public will also be able to discover two cinema rooms, a restauranta public library, a conference room and workshops. A titanic project to 1 billion dollars which will have required (if the opening takes place in a year) a dozen years, including eight of work, to see the light of day.