Lucas Museum opens its doors in Los Angeles with 40,000 works to explore

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles opens to the public on Tuesday, September 22, 2026.

The museum confirmed the date in a public statement. That notice is the authoritative timing for the opening, superseding an earlier announcement from 2025 Lucas Museum.

It is a new building on an old lot. The site was once an asphalt lot. It now holds the museum and its surrounding grounds Lucas Museum.

The form is sculptural. That word, in museum language, simply means a building shaped as much for look and flow as for floor space. The architect for that design is Ma Yansong.

The grounds are part of the plan too. They are described by the museum as an evolving landscape, a planting scheme intended to grow and change over time. It was created by Mia Lehrer.

Walk in with a plan. The permanent collection, the works owned by the museum rather than borrowed for short runs, holds more than 40,000 works, according to the museum's opening announcement Lucas Museum. No visitor sees that much in one day.

That is where a shortlist helps. ARTnews has published a guide titled 'See 11 Treasures at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art' ARTnews. Eleven out of 40,000. It is a starting point, not the whole story.

What makes this stand out for a general audience is the scale of choice. A very large collection can feel hard to enter. A small, organised list gives first-time visitors a route through and lets them pick favourites early.

The opening itself is straightforward. One city. One building. One public start date. Los Angeles gets a new museum on September 22, built from car park blacktop, shaped by an architect and a landscape designer, and stocked with tens of thousands of works waiting to be explored.