From Ma Yansong's visionary architecture to Studio-MLA's transformative gardens, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art transforms what was once eleven acres of parking lot into innovative new Los Angeles cultural landmark where art, nature, and community converge.
The home of the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is an 11-acre campus with a landscape consisting of trees, gardens, walkways, and sculptures embrace a nearly 300,000-square-foot building. The five-story museum building includes approximately 100,000 square feet of dedicated gallery space, two state-of-the-art cinematic theaters, numerous spaces for learning and engagement, a café and a restaurant, and retail and special events spaces.
Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA has taken what was once an asphalt parking lot and transformed it into a living, dynamic landscape that blooms with the colors of Southern California’s seasons. With native and drought-tolerant plantings, over 200 trees, and landforms that evoke Los Angeles as a series of valleys nestled between mountains, the gardens will offer a distinct experience with each visit. Rolling fields, leisurely walking paths, and inviting gathering areas will also create much needed shade and green space for South Los Angeles.
Long before the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art broke ground in March 2018, architect Ma Yansong envisioned an urban oasis of tree canopies and clouds when designing the building's sculptural form. The building's flowing outer surface is made of 1,300 unique fiberglass-reinforced polymer (FRP) panels, each custom shaped and precisely placed. Those striking outer curves have led many observers to see something otherworldly taking shape in South Los Angeles, as if a spaceship was being built from the ground up in Exposition Park.
This architectural marvel represents the culmination of a 15-year collaboration between architect and founders.
"From the beginning, some people warned me, ‘[George] is a designer, he will modify your work,'" Yansong says of working with Lucas. "But he never does that. He's an artist, so maybe he doesn't like other people doing that to his work."
Visitors enter the museum through a cathedral-like entrance, where converging arches soar overhead and three clear glass elevator tubes beckon you upward.
Over 100,000 square feet of gallery space will showcase works organized around over 30 universal themes—from family, to love, fantasy, work, play, science fiction, and beyond.
Two state-of-the-art theaters, each personally programmed by George Lucas, will offer state-of-the art projection and sound.
The location of the Lucas Museum within Los Angeles’s Exposition Park provides remarkable opportunities to collaborate and partner with other Los Angeles cultural institutions.
Located southwest of Downtown Los Angeles, the 160-acre Exposition Park is home to cultural, educational, and recreational institutions including the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California African American Museum, the California Science Center and Theodore J. Alexander Science Center School, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, BMO Stadium, the Exposition Park Rose Garden, and EXPO Center.