Construction continues to surge ahead at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, as the MAD-designed landmark prepares to open its doors in 2026. Envisioned by filmmaker George Lucas, who also serves as the museum’s curator, this futuristic civic space is shaped like a sculptural canopy, hovering lightly above a revitalized, pedestrian-friendly parkland.
‘Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life,’ says George Lucas. Hobson adds that the museum seeks to be ‘a museum of the people’s art,’ reflecting visitors’ own experiences.
UPDATE September 1st, 2025: Three weeks before the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public, the building that spent years rising behind construction fencing can finally be read alongside the landscape around it. Designed by Ma Yansong of MAD, the 300,000-square-foot museum stretches across an 11-acre campus in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, lifting its long, curving volume above gardens planted with more than 200 trees.
Opening September 22nd, 2026, the five-story institution 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.
image courtesy The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
MAD lifts the building above Exposition Park
Led by Ma Yansong, the team at MAD replaces right angles with fluid, organic geometries in the Lucas Museum’s design, shaping its sculptural form with over 1,500 uniquely molded fiberglass-reinforced polymer (FRP) 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.
all images by LA TIMES – Chun Myung & Jason Armond, via MAD, unless stated otherwise
Studio-MLA replaces parking lots with a living 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.
The relationship between architecture and park becomes especially visible at ground level. Instead of meeting the site with a conventional facade and lobby, the museum draws visitors beneath its body, where the gardens continue through the covered entrance. Views remain open across Exposition Park, and the building creates shade along a site previously dominated by exposed pavement.
image courtesy The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
more than 1,200 works fill the inaugural galleries
Inside, the Lucas 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. Mellody Hobson has described the collection as ‘the people’s art,’ built around images that circulate widely and become part of everyday memory. 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.
the Lucas Museum Campus, image by Patrick Price
MAD replaces right angles with fluid, organic geometries | image by LA TIMES – Chun Myung & Jason Armond, via MAD
photo by Lou Caltabiano
the building hovers lightly above a revitalized, pedestrian-friendly parkland | image by LA TIMES – Chun Myung & Jason Armond, via MAD
landscape architect Mia Lehrer is transforming what was once a sea of parking lots into a shaded public oasis | image by LA TIMES – Chun Myung & Jason Armond, via MAD
Mellody Hobson and George Lucas, 2025. © 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. all rights reserved | image by Deanna and Ed Templeton
Lucas Museum construction, May 2025, © 2025 JAKS Productions | image by Roberto Gomez, courtesy USC School of Cinematic Arts
project info:
project title: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art | @lucasmuseum
architecture: MAD architects | @madarchitects
location: Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California
public opening: September 22nd, 2026
previous coverage: March 2018, February 2020, September 2022, March 2024, March 2025
photography: © Roberto Gomez, Sand Hill Media/Eric Furie
founding partners: George Lucas, Mellody Hobson
MAD Architects team: Ma Yansong (founder, principal partner), Lu Junliang (Dixon) (associate partner), Lee Flora (associate partner)
architect of record: Stantec (Michael Siegel) | @stantec
landscape architect: Studio-MLA (Mia Lehrer) | @studio_mla
construction manager: JLL (Cory Langer, Dustin Worland)
general contractor: Hathaway Dinwiddie (Rick Cridland)
structural engineer: LERA
mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire life safety: Alfa Tech
MAD Architects partners: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano
competition and design team: Kin Li, Tiffany Dahlen, Daniel Weber, Jordan Kanter, Daniel Gillen, Wu Kaicong, Zhao Wei, Flora Lee, Jonathan Kontuly, Carmen Carrasco, Jacob Hu, Satoko Narishige, Zhu Yuhao, Casey Kell, Matthew Pugh, Kazushi Miyamoto, Ben Yuqiang, Hiroki Fujino, Chris Nolop, Kek Seow, Younjin Park, Brecht Van Acker, Andrea D’antrassi, Zhang Yiran, Pouya Goshayeshi, Dora Lam, Victor Tung, Steven Park Chaffer, Sean Tan, Sheenam Mujoo, Dookee Chung, Cesar D. Pena Del Rey, Valeria Pestereva, Wang Yiqi, Dmitry Seregin, Lin Yuyang, Che-hung Chien, Zhang Lu, Zeng Hao, Young Koo Kang, Shen Han
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