Tonight, George Lucas, Mellody Hobson, and a co-chair list that includes Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Greta Gerwig, Jensen Huang, Guillermo del Toro, and Pharrell Williams are walking into the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art for its opening gala. The public gets its turn on Tuesday, September 22. If you have been watching the countdown, you already know that part.
What most coverage skips is that the museum did not open all at once, and it is not opening as one thing even now. Different pieces of the 13-acre Exposition Park campus have been switching on for weeks, on different terms, with different rules about who needs a ticket. And the building most people assume they will pair it with, the Space Shuttle Endeavour next door, is currently dark. The "spend a day at Exposition Park" plan a lot of Angelenos are picturing right now does not fully exist yet.
Three Opening Dates, Not One
The museum's rollout has run in stages. Member preview days ran September 5 through 11. A Neighborhood Preview Day, reserved specifically for residents of the 90037 zip code, took place September 13, a detail that says something about how the museum is positioning itself in South Los Angeles before it positions itself to the rest of the city. Tonight's gala is a private benefit. General admission starts Tuesday.
That staggered sequence matters if you are trying to time a visit around crowds. The people who live closest got first look before the world's press did.
The Part That's Already Been Open for Weeks
Here is the detail that gets lost under the Star Wars headlines: you do not need a museum ticket to be on this campus right now, and you have not needed one for a while.
The 13-acre Park and Gardens, designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA on what used to be an asphalt parking lot, is free and open to the public from 8 a.m. until sunset. It includes more than 300 newly planted trees, a meadow, an amphitheater, and a fountain built as a waterfall. Ten monumental bronze sculptures line the walkways, including Fernando Botero's Maternity from 2015 alongside newer commissioned pieces tied to the Star Wars films, like a bronze of Padmé fighting a Nexu from Attack of the Clones and one of Leia freeing herself from Jabba the Hutt.
The museum's Research Library is also free, no ticket required, open from 10 a.m. to one hour before the museum closes. Its shelves hold more than 30,000 comic books and archival material on underground comics and children's literature, roughly 3,000 art books donated by Steve Martin and his wife Ann Martin, and over 2,900 volumes from mythologist Joseph Campbell's personal library, some with his own handwritten notes still in the margins. That is a genuinely unusual public resource sitting inside a building most people think of as a Star Wars stop.
And Skywalker Grill, the rooftop restaurant designed by Rockwell Group and run by Rhubarb Hospitality Collection, part of Oak View Group, serves lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch to anyone who walks in, ticket or not. It stays open past museum hours, which means you can eat dinner on that rooftop the same night the galleries close for the day.
None of that required Tuesday's opening. It has been sitting there, free, for anyone who already knew to show up.
The Ticket Nobody Expected to Need
Where the museum gets stricter is the galleries themselves, and the rule catches people off guard: every visitor needs a timed-entry ticket, including children and members whose admission is free.
The pricing, according to the museum's own site:
- Adults: $25
- Seniors 65 and over: $21
- Children 17 and under: free
- Active-duty military: free
- LM37 passholders: free
Free does not mean walk-in. General tickets went on sale to the public on July 21 for any date between September 22, 2026, and February 28, 2027, capped at nine per transaction. If you are planning a family trip built around a free kid's ticket, you still need to reserve a slot for that child weeks in advance.
Inside, the draw for a lot of first-time visitors will be Star Wars in Motion, the inaugural cinema gallery built around vehicle designs, props, costumes, and illustrations from the first six films. But the museum's stated ambition is broader than that one gallery, spanning more than 1,200 works across 30-plus galleries that trace visual storytelling from prehistoric imagery through comics, murals, and film.
The Building Next Door Is Still Dark
This is the part that will disappoint people who show up expecting a two-museum afternoon.
The California Science Center, immediately adjacent to the Lucas Museum, is home to the Space Shuttle Endeavour, one of the most photographed objects in the park. As of this writing, the Endeavour is off display. It is being moved into a new home, the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, and earlier reporting this year pointed to a mid-to-late 2026 target for that building to open. There has been no announcement moving that date up.
If your plan is "Lucas Museum in the morning, shuttle in the afternoon," check the Science Center's own site before you build a day around it. The rest of the Science Center's galleries remain open. The shuttle itself is not currently one of them.
That is worth knowing before you plan a trip, not after you arrive.
Getting There Without Losing the Afternoon to Parking
Exposition Park was not built with a billion-dollar art museum's opening-week crowds in mind, and the parking situation reflects that. Multiple visitor guides flag Exposition Park's on-site lots as prone to event-day price spikes and long entry lines, particularly with USC home games and Coliseum events sharing the same streets.
The Metro E Line offers a real alternative. The Expo/Vermont station is the closest stop to the Lucas Museum's One Lucas Plaza address, a short walk from the entrance. The Expo Park/USC station, a few blocks over, is the better drop-off point if you are also hitting the Natural History Museum, the California Science Center, or the California African American Museum, all of which sit within the same 160-acre grounds along with the Rose Garden and the LA Memorial Coliseum. Coming from downtown, the Red or Purple Line to 7th St/Metro Center connects directly to the E Line.
If you are set on driving, arrive early. The park's lots fill fast on any day with a marquee opening, and this month has one.
What's Actually in the Galleries
Beyond the Star Wars gallery, the permanent collection reaches further than the marketing suggests. The building itself, a 300,000-square-foot structure designed by Beijing-based architect Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec, was shaped to move visitors through changing environments meant to echo California's own foothills, valleys, and canyons. Inside, the collection draws on artists across centuries and mediums, from Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo to comic-strip and mural artists whose work rarely gets museum wall space next to fine art.
That range is the actual bet the museum is making. Whether it lands is a separate question from whether the building and grounds are worth your time this month. On the evidence of what is already open, free, and walkable, they are.
What This Means If You Live Here
You do not need a $25 ticket or a reserved time slot to spend an afternoon at Exposition Park this week. The park, the library, and the rooftop restaurant are open now, and have been for weeks, while the ticketed galleries are still working through their first public days. If Star Wars props are the draw, book ahead. If you just want to see what a 13-acre public garden looks like when it replaces a parking lot, or eat dinner on a rooftop across from the Coliseum, you can do that today.
What you cannot do yet is the full Exposition Park day some articles are describing, shuttle included. That piece of the plan is still under construction next door, and no one has moved up the timeline.
Los Angeles adds a building like this every few years, and each one changes how a neighborhood gets talked about and, eventually, how people think about living near it. Aaron Kirman has spent close to three decades reading those shifts across the city's most architecturally significant corners. If you are watching how a project like this reshapes the area around it, or thinking ahead to what that means for property nearby, let's connect.
