by Mayté Rodríguez Cedillo and Fernando Favela * California & Beyond * Los Angeles
photos Courtesy Getty Images for Lucas Museum of Narrative Art 

Morning light slides across a shell of more than 1,500 hand-finished panels, and for a moment the newest building in Exposition Park looks less like architecture than like something that landed. Inside, past a four-story oculus open to the sky, a gallery marked simply “Murals” waits with three artists who have never before shared a wall: Diego Rivera, Judith F. Baca, and the French photographer JR, whose 65-foot portrait of a Tecate toddler once looked out over a border fence. On September 22, 2026, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public — and the story it tells begins, fittingly, with a wall.

AT A GLANCE — The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, opens September 22, 2026, in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. The 300,000-square-foot building holds 35 galleries and more than 40,000 works, including an inaugural Murals gallery pairing Diego Rivera and Judith F. Baca with French artist JR. General admission is $25 for adults, free for visitors 17 and under.

A Gallery Called Murals
The Lucas Museum’s inaugural Murals gallery places three artists rarely mentioned in the same sentence — Diego Rivera, Judith F. Baca, and street artist JR — inside a single room built around large-scale, public-facing storytelling. It is the clearest argument the museum makes for its own premise: that a wheatpasted photograph and a fresco painted a century apart can speak the same visual language.

Rivera, the founding figure of Mexican Muralism, needs little introduction to readers who have followed his work across México and beyond. Baca is best known in Los Angeles for The Great Wall of Los Angeles, the half-mile Tujunga Wash mural she began in 1974 and has expanded for decades since. JR‘s inclusion continues a story BajaTraveler® readers already know: the French photographer built his early reputation wheatpasting giant portraits onto walls from Paris rooftops to Rio’s favelas, and in 2017 turned a one-year-old named Kikito into a 65-foot figure peering over the fence at Tecate, Baja California — an installation covered in our earlier feature on his career. That piece no longer stands; what does stand, starting this month, is his place inside one of the best-funded museum openings in recent American history.

An Architecture Built to Float
Designed by Ma Yansong of the Beijing-based firm MAD, with Stantec serving as executive architect, the Lucas Museum’s biomorphic form is engineered to look weightless — a five-story building clad in more than 1,500 uniquely shaped fiberglass-reinforced polymer panels, each fabricated through a combination of robotics and hand-finishing so the curves read as one continuous surface.

Central arched steel beams spanning 185 feet lift a public plaza above street level, and a central elliptical Oculus opens a sightline four stories from ground to sky. Outside, landscape architect Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA has planted more than 200 trees across an 11-acre park that includes a hanging garden, an amphitheater, and a waterfall-like fountain — all built on what was, until recently, an asphalt parking lot. The building rests on 281 seismic base isolators designed to let the structure shift up to 42 inches during an earthquake and recenter itself afterward, the kind of engineering more often found in hospitals than museums.

Fifty Years in the Making
George Lucas began collecting narrative art more than five decades ago, starting with a single Alley Oop comic illustration bought in college; the founding collection he built with his wife, Ariel Investments co-CEO Mellody Hobson, now spans more than 40,000 works and anchors a museum both describe as belonging to the public.

“This art belongs to everyone,” Hobson has said of the collection, which ranges from Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers to the comic art of Jack Kirby and R. Crumb, from Frida Kahlo and Jacob Lawrence to production art from the Star Wars films that made Lucas’s name. Lucas has described the museum’s purpose more simply still: stories, he has said, are how people make sense of the mysteries of life. Whether that premise satisfies the art world’s stricter critics or not, the collection itself — assembled by two of the most committed collectors in American museum history — is not in question.

Planning Your Visit
General admission opens September 22, 2026, with tickets priced at $25 for adults and $21 for seniors 65 and older; visitors 17 and under, active-duty military, and EBT cardholders are admitted free. The museum sits on the Metro E Line at the Expo Park/USC stop, a short walk from the California Science Center and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Given the demand expected around opening weeks, timed-entry tickets are worth reserving as early as possible through the museum’s website. Pair the visit with the rest of Exposition Park’s cultural cluster — the Natural History Museum, the California African American Museum, and the California Science Center all sit within walking distance — for a full day of Los Angeles’s museum corridor rather than a single stop.

✦ BajaTraveler® Takeaway
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art arrives with the scale of a blockbuster and the intimacy of a personal collection — a rare combination. Seeing JR’s work settle permanently beside Diego Rivera and Judith F. Baca gives the Murals gallery a resonance no single artist could deliver alone. For travelers already drawn to Los Angeles’s arts scene, this is the opening to plan a trip around.

Plan Your Visit
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens September 22, 2026, in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. General admission: $25 adults, $21 seniors (65+), free for ages 17 and under, active-duty military, and EBT cardholders. Reserve timed entry in advance for opening weeks.
→ Visit lucasmuseum.org

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
When does the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art open?
The museum opens to the public on September 22, 2026, in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, after construction that began in 2018. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, it is dedicated to illustrated and narrative storytelling across painting, comics, photography, and film.

How much are Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets?
General admission is $25 for adults and $21 for seniors 65 and older. Visitors 17 and under, active-duty military, and EBT cardholders are admitted free. Timed-entry tickets are recommended, especially around the September opening.

What artists are featured in the Murals gallery?
The inaugural Murals gallery pairs Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and Los Angeles muralist Judith F. Baca, known for The Great Wall of Los Angeles, with French photographer JR, whose large-scale portrait work has appeared on walls from Paris to Tecate, Baja California.

Is JR’s Kikito installation part of the Lucas Museum’s collection?
No. The 2017 Kikito installation in Tecate was temporary and no longer exists at its original site. The work joining Rivera and Baca in the Murals gallery is a separate piece from JR’s broader body of large-scale portraiture.

How do I get to the Lucas Museum from other Exposition Park museums?
The museum sits on the Metro E Line at the Expo Park/USC stop, within walking distance of the California Science Center, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the California African American Museum.