Co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the Lucas Museum was designed by renowned architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects with Stantec as executive architect and is under construction in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. An 11-acre campus with extensive new green space designed by Studio-MLA will embrace the museum’s 300,000-square-foot building, which will feature expansive galleries, two state-of-the-art theaters, and dedicated spaces for learning and engagement, dining, retail, and events.
Ralph McQuarrie, production painting for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Artoo and Threepio leave the pod in the desert), January 31, 1975, © and TM Lucasfilm Ltd. 2020 All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
George Lucas
Founder, Lucasfilm
Co-chair of the Board
Mellody Hobson
Co-CEO and President, Ariel Investments
Co-chair of the Board
Filmmaker George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments, believe in the power of illustrated stories to connect us.
With decades of collecting between them, they have together assembled a collection that includes everything from iconic American painting to popular illustrative, comic, and cinematic art. Lucas, creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and founder of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, has been collecting art since college, a time when he could only afford $30 comic art originals because "real art" was out of reach. Over 50 years that collection has grown to more than 40,000 pieces, each world held not as an investment but because it meant something to him. "I could never [sell art]," Lucas says. "That’s just now what I think art is. I think it's more about an emotional connection with the work, not how much it cost."
In addition to managing Ariel Investments, Hobson is the former chairman of Starbucks Corporation and serves as a director of JPMorgan Chase. In 2010, Hobson and Lucas signed the Giving Pledge, committing to dedicate the majority of their wealth to improving education, particularly through the arts. "We've always said that we're holding society's money,” explains Hobson,” and that we fully intend to give back. This is how we're doing it."
George Lucas
Founder, Lucasfilm
Co-chair of the Board
Mellody Hobson
Co-CEO and President, Ariel Investments
Co-chair of the Board
Andrea Wishom
President, Skywalker Holdings, LLC
Vice-chair of the Board
Henry Bienen
President Emeritus, Northwestern University
Cesar Conde
Chairman, NBCUniversal News Group
Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker
Arne Duncan
Former U.S. Secretary of Education
Jim Gianopulos
CEO, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
Michael Govan
CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
John McCarter, Jr.
President Emeritus, The Field Museum of Natural History
Steven Spielberg
Filmmaker
Matthew Yale
Founder & CEO, Grove Partners
Ernie Barnes, The Drum Major, 2003, © Ernie Barnes Family Trust, photographed by Jeff McLane. Courtesy of UTA Artist Space and the Estate of Ernie Barnes
Jim Gianopulos
CEO
James N. (Jim) Gianopulos has been a leading figure in the entertainment industry for more than 40 years. He currently serves as CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and as special advisor to the museum’s founders, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson. Until 2021, he was chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, where he oversaw major film productions like Mission Impossible: Fallout, A Quiet Place, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Top Gun: Maverick. Under his leadership, Paramount Television Studios also expanded with series such as The Offer and Fatal Attraction.
Before Paramount, Gianopulos was chairman and CEO of Twentieth Century Fox from 2000 to 2016, where he led the studio to record-breaking profits. Among the many successes during Gianopulos’s stewardship were two of the highest grossing films of all time, Titanic and Avatar, as well as the Planet of the Apes, X Men, and Star Wars franchises, in addition to Deadpool, The Martian, and many other critical and commercial successes. He also played a key role in advancing media technologies, including the launches of iTunes and Hulu.
Gianopulos is actively involved in civic and philanthropic endeavors, serving on the boards of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the X Prize Foundation, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. His contributions to the industry have earned him numerous accolades.