George Lucas's Spaceship Museum Lands in Los Angeles, Opening September 22
A five-storey building sheathed in 1,271 white panels rises above a 13-acre site in Los Angeles's Exposition Park, looking less like a museum than a spacecraft that has settled gently into the ground. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas and businesswoman Mellody Hobson — opens to the public on 22 September 2026, capping a journey of more than a decade from first design unveiling to completion (Dezeen).
Beijing-based architecture studio MAD, working with the global firm Stantec, led the design. MAD founder Ma Yansong said the building was conceived as an "emotional architecture space" — fluid in every part, with no hard edges where a visitor might expect them (Dezeen). The exterior cladding is fibre-glass-reinforced polymer, each panel averaging 8 by 32 feet (2.4 by 9.7 metres). Dezeen, the architecture and design publication that has tracked the project closely, has described the facade as "organic" (Dezeen). From most angles it reads as a single continuous surface, sweeping up and over the roofline.
That roof does more than cap the building. Sections not covered by photovoltaic panels — solar cells that generate electricity — are planted with greenery, part of a landscape designed by California practice Studio-MLA that extends the park setting around the structure. Photography of the completed building was released on 3 September 2026, credited to architectural photographers Iwan Baan and Hufton+Crow (Dezeen).
The museum broke ground in March 2018, but the design MAD first unveiled predates even that by several years (Dezeen). The institution's official opening date was announced on 12 November 2025 (Lucas Museum press release). Its address is One Lucas Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90037.
As for what visitors will find inside: the museum is dedicated to storytelling across visual art — painting, illustration, cinema and digital media — collected by Lucas over decades. Its inaugural exhibition is presented in partnership with TASCHEN, the German art-book publisher, a detail confirmed on 27 August 2026 (Lucas Museum press release).
Practical details are set. The museum is open 10 AM to 5 PM on Monday and Wednesday through Thursday, with extended Friday hours until 9 PM. Weekend hours run 9 AM to 9 PM, Saturday and Sunday. It is closed on Tuesdays, as well as Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing.
For a project often described in terms of how it looks — spaceship, cloud, organic form — the practical facts are straightforward. A new museum, eight years under construction, opens its doors in nineteen days.
