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AMERICANALMANAC (Alan Benson) - George Lucas's $1 billion museum in Los Angeles finally set to open after 16 years Thu Sep 10 01:00:28 2026

George Lucas spent five decades collecting art and memorabilia, and now his massive, spaceship-shaped museum in Los Angeles is scheduled to open its doors on September 22, more than 16 years after the project began. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will sprawl across 28,000 square meters, roughly 300,000 square feet, with five floors, 30 […] The post George Lucas's $1 billion museum in Los Angeles finally set to open after 16 years appeared first on American Almanac .

George Lucas spent five decades collecting art and memorabilia, and now his massive, spaceship-shaped museum in Los Angeles is scheduled to open its doors on September 22, more than 16 years after the project began. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will sprawl across 28,000 square meters, roughly 300,000 square feet, with five floors, 30 galleries, and more than 1,300 objects on display. The building itself, with its curved white walls, looks like something pulled from a science-fiction set. Two cinematic theaters sit inside. More than 200 trees surround the grounds outside. The Sun reported the project carries a price tag of roughly £740 million, north of $900 million at current exchange rates. For a filmmaker who built an empire on visual storytelling, the collection reads like a personal inventory of the images that shaped him. Visitors will find early sketches by Van Gogh and Picasso alongside rare comics by Frank Miller, artwork from Banksy, and pieces by Frida Kahlo. Star Wars vehicles, the franchise that made Lucas a household name, will also be on display, along with items tied to the anime series Cowboy Bebop. Five decades of collecting, 16 years of waiting Lucas began assembling the collection more than 50 years ago, long before any museum existed to house it. The project itself has been in development for more than a decade and a half, a timeline that would test anyone's patience. No explanation for the extended delay appears in available reporting, but the sheer scale of the building and collection offers one obvious answer. The museum will include a restaurant called the Skywalker Grill, a name that needs no explanation for anyone who has seen a movie in the last half-century. Admission runs $25 for adults, free for kids Adult tickets cost $25, about £18.50, per person. Children 17 and under get in free. In an era when a family trip to a theme park can run into four figures before lunch, that pricing stands out. The museum's posted hours cover every day of the week, though whether that schedule is permanent or limited to the opening period remains unclear. Lucas built Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company that changed how movies look. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for roughly $4 billion. The museum represents something different: a personal statement about the art and images he spent a lifetime gathering, finally arranged for the public to see. Sixteen years is a long time to wait for anything. But when a man who imagined galaxies far, far away decides to build something on this planet, the result was never going to be small, or quick. The post George Lucas's $1 billion museum in Los Angeles finally set to open after 16 years appeared first on American Almanac .