Some LA events feel big. This one felt genuinely historic. On Saturday night, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson opened the doors to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art for the first time, and we were there to watch five decades of one man’s dream officially become a landmark in Exposition Park.
Co-chaired by a genuinely staggering group — Julie Bell, Tom Cruise, Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Sir Lewis Hamilton, Jensen Huang, JR, Steven Spielberg and Pharrell Williams — this wasn’t a quiet ribbon-cutting. It was the kind of night where you’d turn around and find yourself standing next to Robert DeNiro, or catch Oprah Winfrey mid-conversation with Samuel L. Jackson, and just have to keep moving.
The Night Began in Lucas Plaza
Guests were welcomed outside with a cocktail reception soundtracked by a 27-piece orchestra, before Voices of Fire — the powerhouse gospel and soul vocal collective co-founded by Bishop Ezekiel Williams and Pharrell Williams — took over, joined by Jon Batiste on piano and 75 additional singers. Their set ran from “Yoda’s Theme” to “Happy” to “JOY (Unspeakable),” and the blend of Star Wars nostalgia with full-bodied gospel sound set the tone for a night that never quite settled into just one genre or mood.
From there, Queen Latifah hosted a program featuring remarks from Lucas, Hobson, architect Ma Yansong, and museum CEO Tracey Bates. Lucas kept his comments simple and personal: “Art is in the eye of the beholder. If it is emotional to you, then it’s art… I believe it, wholeheartedly, that you get to decide what art is.” Hobson, who’s spent years alongside him building this, described the museum as “a director’s cut,” adding, “I call it a museum by the people for the people, he calls it a museum of the people’s art, the key word is ‘people.’” Bates thanked Lucas directly for “50 years of collecting” and for believing illustration, comics and narrative art belonged in a space like this, while Queen Latifah put the mission in bigger terms: “They believe that narrative art is how we pass down values from generation to generation.”
Exploring the galleries
Once the program wrapped, guests were free to wander through more than 30 galleries inside the museum, getting a first real look at what Lucas has spent decades quietly collecting, everything from prehistoric-inspired narrative imagery to contemporary screen art, all housed inside Ma Yansong’s genuinely striking 300,000-square-foot building.
The night’s most visually stunning moment came on the fifth-floor rooftop, where Oprah Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson introduced a drone show from Nova Sky Stories that lit up the sky with images pulled directly from the museum’s collection: the Cave of Altamira, N.C. Wyeth’s The Storybook, Julie Bell’s The Huntress, Banksy’s Girl with Balloon, the Millennium Falcon, and Maxfield Parrish’s Ecstasy, all rendered in light above Exposition Park. It’s hard to overstate how genuinely cool it was to watch decades of narrative art history play out overhead in real time.
Just when the night felt like it was winding toward its natural close, the party moved back inside for a surprise set from the Black Eyed Peas, who tore through “Let’s Get It Started,” “Where Is the Love” and “I Gotta Feeling.” The rest of the night’s entertainment lineup was just as eclectic including LA Dance Project, ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, harpist Xavier de Maistre, violinist Damien Escobar, harpist/pianist Kaki King, and DJ sets from DJ Kiss and DJ M.O.S. who kept things moving well into the evening.
Trying to list everyone in the room would take all night, but the scale of it is worth sitting with for a second. Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Laura Dern, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart, Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson, Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys, Nicole Kidman, Spike Lee, Al Pacino, Tyler Perry, Katy Perry, SZA, Denis Villeneuve, Kerry Washington, Emma Watson, and Robert Zemeckis were just a fraction of the names circulating through the space. LA’s civic side showed up too including Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom who were both in attendance, alongside Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, a nice nod to the museum’s bigger themes of imagination and exploration.
On the art and philanthropy side, the room included David Geffen, Melinda French Gates, Michael Govan, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Laurene Powell Jobs and architect Ma Yansong himself, among many more.
The opening night celebration was part of a run-up to the museum’s official public opening, today Tuesday, September 22nd!
Built on a 13-acre campus that includes a new park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA, the museum is Lucas and Hobson’s answer to a simple but ambitious question: does narrative art — comics, illustration, film, concept art — deserve the same institutional respect as anything else hanging in a major museum? Judging by Saturday night’s guest list alone, a lot of very accomplished people already agree with them.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is now open to the public in Exposition Park.
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