George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Los Angeles
George Lucas has opened the Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles after 17 years, a museum celebrating visual storytelling with props, costumes, galleries, theatres and a library.
The Full Story
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The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has opened in Los Angeles, drawing Hollywood attention and marking the end of a 17-year effort by Star Wars creator George Lucas.
The museum is dedicated to narrative art and visual storytelling. Its scale is central to the opening: - more than 100,000 square feet of galleries; - two cinematic theatres; - a library; - thousands of classic props and costumes.
It sits in the Los Angeles park that will host the Olympic Games in 2028. The building has been compared to a spaceship, but its purpose is to celebrate storytelling. At the opening, the message was that 'The picture is very powerful and the stories are very powerful and you combine them together and those two elements create a society.'
George Lucas is the creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, among other films. Members of the public saw inside the museum for the first time. One attendee said: 'We were sitting front row with a couple of our other classmates and it was very inspiring to hear him talk.' The same attendee noted the scale of behind-the-scenes work: 'Seeing just how many moving parts there are to this, there's all this art that goes behind the scenes that we don't necessarily get to see when we see the final movie.'
Nearly 50 years after the first Star Wars film, the opening has also raised the question of whether the franchise and its visual style belong alongside the great artworks of the world. One view put forward was that it has always been fine art: 'I always considered it fine art. It's the way it was conceived and what it was going to be that changed the future of cinema in a specific kind of way.' The same speaker added that when something is that impactful, 'people grab hold to it and run.'
On screen
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Key Claims
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Channel Perspectives
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5 News Weekend gave the opening a short, end-of-bulletin mention. It highlighted the Hollywood turnout and the museum's long gestation and scale, but offered no interviews or detail on the building's design or purpose. Its tone was brief and entertainment-focused.
- “Hollywood showed up for the opening of Star Wars creator George Lucas's new museum in Los Angeles last night.”
- “The Museum of Narrative Art, which has been 17 years in the making, will feature thousands of classic props and costumes.”
ITV gave the story a full package, treating Lucas as a major cultural figure and the museum as a celebration of visual storytelling. It focused on the 17-year effort, the building's scale, its location in an Olympic park, and the debate over whether Star Wars counts as fine art. The tone was warm and curious, with a Yoda joke and voices from attendees.
- “So in a case of life imitating art, in the words of Yoda, it really has been a case of do or do not. There is no try.”
- “The picture is very powerful and the stories are very powerful and you combine them together and those two elements create a society.”
- “We were sitting front row with a couple of our other classmates and it was very inspiring to hear him talk.”
Who was on air
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- 13:49 BST
Broadcast Timeline
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