LOS ANGELES, Calif. — The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened to the public Tuesday in Exposition Park, a reported $1 billion project co-founded by filmmaker George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments, one of the largest Black-owned asset management firms in the country.
A star-filled gala Saturday drew Oprah Winfrey, Samuel L. Jackson, Tyler Perry, Spike Lee and Queen Latifah, who hosted the evening’s program. But the story that lasts past the red carpet is what the museum holds — and who can afford to walk in.
The collection of more than 40,000 works includes Black artists Kerry James Marshall, Charles White, Carrie Mae Weems, Jacob Lawrence and Kadir Nelson. Among the Nelson works the museum has acquired is “Art Connoisseurs” (2019), which reimagines Norman Rockwell’s 1961 painting “The Connoisseur”: where Rockwell placed a white man in front of a drip painting, Nelson painted a Black couple studying graffiti. About 1,200 works are on view for the opening; the museum has not published a full opening-week checklist, so whether “Art Connoisseurs” is currently hanging could not be confirmed.
Hobson and Lucas have a longer record with Black cultural institutions. In 2015 they loaned Johnson Publishing $12 million, and in 2019 they moved in bankruptcy court to secure the historic EBONY and JET photo archive, which served as collateral for the loan; a consortium of foundations ultimately purchased the archive for $30 million, and it now belongs to the Getty and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Their family foundation also gave $10 million to the Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson-led campaign to renovate Spelman College’s arts facilities.
Here is what it costs to go. Adult admission is $25, seniors 65 and older pay $21, and children 17 and under, active-duty military and members enter free. California EBT cardholders get free general admission: entering the promo code “L” followed by the first six digits of the EBT card at checkout unlocks two adult tickets at no cost. Residents of the 90037 ZIP code — the museum’s own South Los Angeles neighborhood — can sign up for the LM37 pass, which grants free admission for the passholder and a guest. Everyone, including children and members, needs a timed-entry ticket, available at lucasmuseum.org.
Regular hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday; and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed Tuesdays — opening day was the exception — and on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
The roughly 300,000-square-foot building, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, holds more than 100,000 square feet of gallery space across more than 30 galleries. It sits at One Lucas Plaza in Exposition Park, next to the Coliseum, the California Science Center and the Natural History Museum, and is reachable on the Metro E Line at the Expo/Vermont or Expo Park/USC stations.
The museum calls itself a first-of-its-kind institution dedicated to storytelling through images. It is open now. Tickets are at lucasmuseum.org.
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