The latest

George Lucas is opening a Los Angeles museum built to recast popular visual storytelling as art worthy of institutional reverence, bringing commercial illustration, comic strips, paperback covers and cinematic design into a shared narrative canon. The filmmaker, who sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, calls the institution a “temple to the people’s art.” CEO Tracey Bates said its mission is to reveal the genius within familiar works by presenting and curating them at museum scale.

Details

• Personal collection: Nearly everything on display comes from Lucas or co-founder Mellody Hobson, his wife and a major collector of African American art. Lucas began buying original newspaper comic art, including “Alley Oop,” while in college. After blockbuster success, he acquired paintings by Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish when commercial artists carried little prestige in established art circles.
• Star Wars footprint: A yellow Naboo N-1 Starfighter from “The Phantom Menace” hangs in the public research library lobby. “Star Wars in Motion” includes Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder from the original film and speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi.” R2-D2 and C-3PO appear in the Cinema Gallery, while a Yoda sculpture stands in the garden.
• Rockwell lens: The Rockwell gallery highlights “The Problem We All Live With,” depicting 6-year-old Ruby Bridges escorted by marshals into an all-white New Orleans school in 1960. Senior curator Ryan Linkof said working at the museum transformed his view of Rockwell into that of a sophisticated image-maker and cultural figure. A new sculpture recreates the artist’s comic self-portrait.
• Parrish sanctuary: Parrish’s ethereal paintings, known for luminous landscapes and a signature blue, occupy a gallery Linkof described as a sanctuary or chapel. Its design lets the works create tranquility; one of the collection’s most ornate images was originally made for a chocolate box.
• Organizing stories: Many galleries reject divisions by artist, era or genre, instead combining styles around everyday themes including sports and civic activism. The collection also encompasses Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Andy Warhol. Linkof said the organizing principle is the stories people tell themselves, rather than categories defined by artistic discipline.
• Comics and fantasy: Dedicated spaces feature Frank Frazetta’s fantasy art and Paul Raymond Gregory’s Tolkien-inspired paintings in skull-studded frames. Children’s galleries include Hilary Knight’s Eloise, Naoyo Kimura’s Pikachu modeled on a Van Gogh self-portrait, and anime and manga. Comic halls range from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to Charles Schulz and Robert Crumb.

What’s next

The museum opens September 22 in Exposition Park beside the University of Southern California, eight years after groundbreaking. Visitors will enter Ma Yansong’s curved, hovering structure, whose broad oval windows frame Los Angeles. An architecture gallery traces proposed San Francisco and Chicago versions alongside development of the final Los Angeles design.