Lucas Museum Teams With Taschen for Multi-Volume Visual Storytelling Collection Ahead of September Opening

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has partnered with art publisher Taschen on a multi-volume book project tracing the history of visual storytelling, timed to the museum's grand opening on 22 September 2026 in Los Angeles (Deadline).

Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum sits in Exposition Park in a five-story, 300,000-square-foot building designed by architect Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec. The structure is integrated into a 13-acre campus that includes a park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. The Taschen publication will anchor the museum's inaugural exhibition.

The collection brings together work from painting, illustration, photography, comics, children's literature and film. Rather than moving century by century, it is organized thematically — pairing artists across genres and eras. Norman Rockwell shares pages with Frank Frazetta; Thomas Hart Benton with Maxfield Parrish; Jessie Willcox Smith with N.C. Wyeth. Commentary comes from Lucas himself and Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, with an introduction by curator Ryan Linkof.

A dedicated section turns to the visual universe of Star Wars. It pairs original production art and concept paintings with physical costumes and screen-used vehicles — the working drawings behind the films set beside the objects that actually appeared on camera. The museum's inaugural cinema exhibition, titled "Star Wars in Motion" and drawn from the founding collection, is one of more than thirty installations opening with the museum on 22 September (Lucas Museum).

For visitors, the Taschen partnership offers something unusual: a museum catalogue that doubles as a standalone argument about what counts as narrative art. The book's thematic structure mirrors the museum's curatorial approach — one that treats a Rockwell magazine cover and a Star Wars concept painting as branches of the same storytelling tradition rather than artefacts from separate worlds.

That framing reflects Lucas's long-stated collecting philosophy. The museum's holdings have always ranged across fine art and popular illustration, and the Taschen volumes make that range legible to a reader who may never set foot in the building. For those who do visit, the book lands as a companion to more than thirty opening installations spread across the Exposition Park campus — a debut that has been years in the making and is now less than a month away.