Recapping The Star-Studded Lucas Museum Opening Night: Who? What? and WHO?

George Lucas opened his $1B Los Angeles Museum with a guest list like never before; including Harrison Ford, Oprah Winfrey, Spielberg, DiCaprio, De Niro and Pacino all in attendance as “A new institution is … born.”

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public on Tuesday, September 22. On Saturday night, before a single ticketholder walked through the doors, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson filled their new Exposition Park building with roughly every person in Hollywood who has ever owed either of them a favor, and a great many who simply wanted to be there.

It took seventeen years and a billion dollars of the couple’s own money to get to that night. It also took three cities. San Francisco said no. Chicago said no. Los Angeles said yes, and the result is a 300,000-square-foot building by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, curving over a thirteen-acre campus, holding more than 100,000 square feet of gallery space across thirty-plus galleries and a collection of over 1,300 works that runs from prehistoric cave painting to Frida Kahlo to Norman Rockwell to Robert Crumb to the complete Lucas Archives.

What happened Saturday was the party before all of that became public property.

Scroll through photos from the Lucas Museum opening night below.

Queen Latifah Set the Terms

The evening opened not with Lucas but with Queen Latifah, a close friend of the couple, who walked out in front of a room of movie stars and told them to stop being movie stars for a minute.

“Nobody gets to go to a night like this,” she said. “No one was in the room when the doors opened at the MoMA, or at the Louvre in 1793, or the Met. So we’ve got to feel the gravity of this moment, because this is enormous. When you look around, your inclination may be to catch up with friends tonight. We’re all artists in awe of each other, but I implore you to soak this in. Allow these artists to speak to you.”

She said she had been emotional all day. “For years I’ve watched them fight for this place. Thousands of meetings, thousands of roadblocks. I’ve seen the heart, the sweat and the time that these two have poured into every curve of this building, and I promise you there’s not one wall in here that they didn’t argue about.”

Then she made the claim the night was built to support: “On September 22, a new institution is being born, and it’s here to change the way we look at art. Paris has the Louvre, New York has the Met, and now L.A. has an artistic equal, the Lucas.”

Mellody Hobson’s Advice: Say No

Hobson, who runs Ariel Investments and has spent the better part of two decades as this project’s closer, took the stage after architect Ma Yansong and opened with a warning.

“If your husband or spouse comes home and says they want to build a museum, I suggest your response is a hard no.”

She described her usual role in the marriage as ballast. “I used to joke with George that at home, one of my jobs as his wife was to serve as a pair of gravity boots. I’d say, ‘George, stay with us,’ as I tried to hold him down. But this time, he pulled me up with him.”

On the years of rejection: “We did not realize how hard it would be to give a city a museum.”

And on the criticism that has trailed the project since it was announced, that narrative art is not serious art, she had the line of the night. “If critics say a museum on narrative art is too much like a popcorn movie and not enough like an art film, well, we like popcorn movies in our family.” She called the building a director’s cut.

George Lucas Made His Argument

Lucas has spent fifteen years being told that illustrators, comic artists and film production designers do not belong in a museum next to Gentileschi and Kahlo. He used his remarks to reject the premise outright.

“You can’t say this is art and this is not art,” Lucas said. “Art is in the eye of the beholder. Is it emotional to you? Then it’s art. And of course I’ve been criticized up and down and sideways for that, but I believe it wholeheartedly. You get to decide what art is.”

What the Room Actually Looked Like

Then the doors opened and the museum became, for a few hours, the densest concentration of filmmaking power in the country.

Vin Diesel spent a stretch in deep conversation with Christopher Nolan. Mark Hamill posed in front of a Luke Skywalker exhibition and later found Peter Jackson. Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro and Jackson formed the kind of group photo that only exists at events like this.

Leonardo DiCaprio held court at a center table in the Skywalker Grill with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, with Coppola and Jeffrey Katzenberg seated nearby. Upstairs on the roof, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King took a table, Tyler Perry laughed with Tracee Ellis Ross, Kim Kardashian stayed close to Lewis Hamilton, and Spike Lee spent part of the night talking to the bartender.

Elsewhere: Jack Black and Keke Palmer with Brian Grazer. Owen Wilson with Bob Iger. Michael B. Jordan and Ludwig Goransson with drinks. Emma Watson with Janelle Monae. Meg Ryan and Jack Quaid out for a mother-son night. Woody Harrelson photographed beside an Indiana Jones statue by his wife. Katy Perry introducing Doja Cat to Justin Trudeau.

The Disney contingent came in force, with Josh D’Amaro, Dana Walden, Alan Bergman, Kathleen Kennedy and Dave Filoni working the rooms. So did the political one: Gavin Newsom fielded a steady line of handshakes, with Nancy Pelosi and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also in attendance.

The Drone Show, and Harrison Ford

At nine o’clock, guests were sent to the roof deck, where Oprah Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson introduced an immersive drone show that filled the sky over Exposition Park with Star Wars imagery and works from the collection below.

When the crowd came back inside, Harrison Ford was seen embracing Lucas. Then the Black Eyed Peas took the stage, and the party found a second gear, with Cynthia Erivo and Orlando Bloom among those dancing.

Also on the guest list: Nicolas Cage, Denis Villeneuve, Laura Dern, Kerry Washington, Hayden Christensen, Alicia Keys, Nathan Fielder, Eva Longoria, Sofia Vergara, SZA, Camila Cabello, Jon Favreau, George R.R. Martin, Jon M. Chu, Magic Johnson, Ron and Bryce Dallas Howard, Rick Caruso, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ted Sarandos. Event co-chairs included Tom Cruise, Greta Gerwig, Lewis Hamilton, Jensen Huang, JR, Julie Bell, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg and Pharrell Williams.

How to Actually Visit

The museum opens to the public Tuesday, September 22, at One Lucas Plaza in Exposition Park.

General admission is $25 for adults and $21 for seniors 65 and over. Children 17 and under are free, as are members, active-duty military and LM37 passholders. Everyone, including members and children, needs a timed-entry ticket booked in advance.

Admission covers all galleries, exhibitions and both theaters, the Robert Flaherty and the Slavko Vorkapich. The surrounding park and gardens, the store and the dining venues, including the Skywalker Grill, are free to enter. The campus also holds ten monumental outdoor sculptures, more than 300 newly planted trees, and a free research library with roughly 30,000 comic books in it.

Joanthan P. Moustakas

Jonathan P. Moustakas founded The Cinema Group in 2020 during the challenges of the pandemic, after losing the vital ability to find community in theaters and escape through the captivating magic of cinema. Feeling profoundly cut off from the vibrant film community he cherished, he sought to create a welcoming home for dedicated cinema fans while providing engaging, daily curated content that resonates with their passions. Years later, The Cinema Group has blossomed from a small collective of loyal fans into a thriving brand that reaches millions of audiences every month across a diverse array of platforms and mediums.

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