The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art officially opened its doors in Los Angeles' Exposition Park with an opening-night gala that rivaled any major Hollywood event.
As the sun set, the museum courtyard, beneath its towering elliptical oculus, filled with guests. Oprah Winfrey was seen embracing Robert De Niro. Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart skipped the red carpet after a conversation with Spike Lee, while Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig shared a laugh by the entrance. Samuel L. Jackson reportedly plopped onto a curved bench, quipping, “Hey, look what I did!” Cynthia Erivo and Andy Garcia arrived to more greetings.
The star power continued with Owen Wilson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Meg Ryan, Jack Quaid, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Justin Trudeau, Mark Hamill, and Magic Johnson also in attendance. After a performance by a vocal collective co-founded by Pharrell Williams, Mellody Hobson, Lucas’s wife, recounted George’s initial anxieties about the guest list, saying, “George kept saying, ‘Will this person come? Do you think this person will come?’
“I said, ‘They will all come,’” Hobson told the laughing crowd during opening remarks in the museum’s grand lobby. She also joked about the difficulty of the undertaking, noting, “If your husband or spouse comes home and says they want to build a museum, I suggest your response is a hard no.”
Inside the posh fifth-floor Skywalker Grill, a significant moment occurred as a group of directors gathered for a photograph. The shot included Lucas himself, Jon M. Chu, Chris Columbus, Francis Ford Coppola, Lee Daniels, Guillermo del Toro, Jon Favreau, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, Chris Meledandri, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, Steven Spielberg, Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, Nathan Fielder, and David Benioff. Efforts to locate Greta Gerwig for the photo were unsuccessful, as she had already moved on.
Artists such as Jeff Koons, Refik Anadol, Judy Baca, and Takashi Murakami, along with museum directors like The Broad’s Joanne Heyler and LACMA’s Michael Govan, were also spotted navigating the crowd.
Lucas and Hobson addressed the museum's mission, which has faced some criticism since its press preview weeks earlier. Critics have called narrative art a false conceit and questioned the juxtaposition of masterworks with pop culture pieces, noting a lack of explanatory wall text. Lucas, however, was resolute in his vision. He shared that when he started the project, “everybody said, ‘You’re crazy. You shouldn’t do it. It’s not going to work. People are going to come after you.’” He added, “People have come after me all my life, especially in the movies.”
Lucas explained his decision to personally curate the museum's 100,000 square feet of gallery space. He felt that plans were “getting off the rails” and that many “don’t understand what I’m doing.” His core belief is that illustration is an art form and illustrators are artists, a concept he says was too much for those trained in traditional art schools. Lucas stated, “You can’t say ‘This is art. This is not art.’ Art is in the eye of the beholder. If it is emotional to you, then it’s art.” He hopes the museum will provide a space for illustrators like R. Crumb and Norman Rockwell, who, he said, have longed to be in a museum but have been overlooked by major institutions worldwide.
Queen Latifah, co-hosting the event, declared to the cheering crowd that “Paris has the Louvre, New York has the Met and now L.A. has the artistic equal.” Hobson echoed this sentiment, noting that if critics compare the museum to a popcorn movie, "we love popcorn movies in our family."
Lucas’s quest to find a permanent home for his museum spanned over two decades, involving land disputes in Chicago and San Francisco before the project finally found its place in Los Angeles. The evening concluded with a drone show in the night sky, narrated by Oprah Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson, featuring images from the museum’s collection, including the "Star Wars" Millennium Falcon. The party then moved indoors for a performance by the Black Eyed Peas.
