George Lucas has unveiled the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, a spaceship-shaped gallery devoted to "visual storytelling" that opens to the public on 22 September after decades of planning and eight years of construction. The film-maker described the project as one that "almost broke my will", with earlier attempts to build the museum in San Francisco and Chicago having fallen through before Los Angeles was chosen. The museum matters as a major new cultural institution that treats storytelling art across all media – from fine art to comics and film costumes – as a single, unified tradition worthy of serious exhibition.

The 100,000 sq ft museum, designed by architect Ma Yansong and located near the University of Southern California, houses works ranging from Norman Rockwell, Diego Rivera and Banksy to the Wizard of Oz's Cowardly Lion costume and comic strips such as Tintin and Superman. It is co-founded by Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, who see narrative art as central to human culture, and is organised into galleries by both medium and theme, alongside cinemas, a mural collection and a research library. Ground-floor exhibits trace visual storytelling from cave paintings through ancient civilisations before leading into the museum's core 20th- and 21st-century collection.