Visitors lined up in Exposition Park on Tuesday, eager to be among the first to experience the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, capping eight years of construction and more than 17 years of planning and site searching.
The museum is privately funded by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, with an estimated cost of over $1 billion. No public money was used for construction. California, however, did provide the museum with a 99-year lease at $30 per year.
During his opening-day speech, Lucas said USC helped bring the museum to Exposition Park and that being close to educational institutions mattered to him.
Lucas began his speech by saying, “I want to start by saying USC, USC, USC,” he added, “The actual larger part of the school’s governance has been very helpful, and it’s very important. I really wanted this to be near schools.”
Lucas attended USC, originally studying anthropology before switching over to film. When speaking about his time at USC, Lucas remembered being told that breaking into the film industry wouldn’t be easy for students.
“You couldn’t stop us because we wanted to make movies,” Lucas said. “We didn’t care whether we got a job.”
“George started by aspiring to have a building so unique that 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds would equally want to come inside,” Hobson said.
Spread across five floors, the museum hosts exhibitions containing artwork ranging from Norman Rockwell paintings and Frida Kahlo to street art by Banksy; it also has a dedicated comic art section and costume replicas from Lucas’ career, including life-sized characters and spaceships from the “Star Wars” franchise.
Opening day drew die-hard fans, some dressed as “Star Wars” characters. Others came to see what Lucas’ creative ambitions had produced.
Edward Agin and Amit Levari, aspiring filmmakers dressed as Indiana Jones, attended a founding members’ preview before Tuesday’s public opening and returned for another look.
“Expectations, especially when we were going for the first time, were very high. I can absolutely say that the expectations were blown out of the water,” Agin said. “It’s a huge, amazing collection full of just so many pieces. There’s a Picasso in there. There’s a Van Gogh. This is one of the best art museums in all of Los Angeles.”
Levari saw the museum as an opportunity to teach people about what storytelling is visually and narratively. “People are leaned in for the ‘Star Wars,’ but they get something else entirely coming out of it,” Levari said.
Still, “Star Wars” was hard to miss at the opening-day festivities. Braeden Days traveled all the way from Pittsburgh with a “Star Wars”-themed vending machine that he described as “iconic.” Dressed as a Sith Lord, a character in “Star Wars,” he brought the vending machine specifically for the museum’s opening.
“We’re just huge ‘Star Wars’ fans, so we wanted to do something special for the opening of the museum,” Days said.
Days explained he was most excited to see the museum’s “Star Wars” collection, but the building impressed him before he even set foot inside. “The building’s beautiful, too,” Days said. “It’s definitely an iconic building in Los Angeles right off the bat.”
For students attending USC just across the street, the museum’s opening adds a new campus-adjacent attraction. Justin Potter, a freshman computer science major, hasn’t visited the museum yet, but said he plans to go.
“I’m actually looking forward to going with some of my roommates at some point,” Potter said. “The ‘Star Wars’ stuff in it is cool from what I’ve seen, but also, I like the narrative art idea with all the different pieces and storytelling, and art is kind of cool.”
Edited by JohVonne Roberts and Ally Nakamura