George Lucas has opened the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in downtown Los Angeles, a billion-dollar personal project the Star Wars creator has steered directly, taking over as lead curator after his inaugural director-CEO and chief curator departed in 2025. The museum is notable for blending high and pop culture on equal terms, treating storytelling itself, or "narrative art", as its unifying theme, a deliberately populist approach likely to draw both admiration and criticism from traditional art circles.

The museum, which opens on 22 September, took 17 years to realise and only reached Los Angeles after earlier attempts to build it in San Francisco and Chicago collapsed. Its galleries mix Star Wars props such as R2-D2 and Darth Vader's suit with Frida Kahlo paintings and Garfield comic panels, and pair works like Norman Rockwell's "The Runaway" with Richard Williams' "The Militarization of the Police Department" to draw pointed contrasts. Lucas, 82, has described the endeavour as akin to filmmaking, with collecting as casting, curation as scripting and installation as editing, while his wife Mellody Hobson has also played a significant role in shaping the project.