Martin Scorsese, JR, and Fantasy Legends Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell Preview the Lucas Museum at NYCC
Credit: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
This Sunday at New York Comic Con, Martin Scorsese will moderate a landmark panel previewing the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, joined by artists JR, Boris Vallejo, and Julie Bell ahead of the museum’s 2026 Los Angeles opening.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is about to step into the spotlight. This Sunday, October 12 at 11 AM, the visionary institution founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson will present Sneak Peek: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art at New York Comic Con. The highly anticipated panel — moderated by Martin Scorsese — brings together an extraordinary lineup of artists whose careers have shaped the way we see and tell stories: French street artist JR, fantasy art icons Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, and the Oscar-winning filmmaker himself.
The event, held in Room 406.3 at the Javits Center, will explore how visual storytelling transcends genre and medium. Scorsese will lead the conversation on the evolving language of narrative art — from ancient myth and fantasy illustration to contemporary photography and cinema. Attendees will also be treated to a first look at exclusive renderings, concept designs, and construction progress photos from the Lucas Museum’s 2026 Los Angeles opening, captured on-site and shared for the first time at NYCC.
Inside the Vision: Building a Museum for the Stories That Move Us
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — set to open in 2026 in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park — will be the first institution of its kind dedicated entirely to storytelling through image. Designed by architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, with landscape architecture by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA, the museum’s sweeping 300,000-square-foot design merges futuristic curves with organic form, its structure appearing to hover above a newly created 11-acre green space.
At Comic Con, attendees will see never-before-seen renderings and behind-the-scenes photos of the museum’s construction progress, revealing the ambitious scope of its design: gallery wings rising above tree-lined courtyards, state-of-the-art theaters, and spaces designed to dissolve boundaries between “fine art” and “popular art.”
The museum’s collection will unite centuries of storytelling — from Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, and Maxfield Parrish to Jack Kirby, Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel, and Dorothea Lange — alongside the Lucasfilm Archive’s legendary props, models, and concept art. It will serve as a living timeline of imagination itself: how humanity has always sought to understand itself through picture and story.
The Artists: Four Masters of the Narrative Image
Scorsese’s presence at the panel bridges cinema’s golden age with its visual ancestors. The Oscar-winning director of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Killers of the Flower Moon has long celebrated narrative art through film restoration, preservation, and mentorship. At NYCC, his role as moderator feels symbolic — a storyteller guiding other storytellers in examining how images shape identity and myth.
Joining him is JR, the French artist renowned for transforming city walls and public spaces into canvases of human expression. His large-scale participatory projects — from Portrait of a Generation in Paris to Inside Out, which has reached over half a million participants worldwide — blur the line between community and canvas, politics and portraiture. His art invites viewers to see themselves within the world’s most urgent stories.
Boris Vallejo, the Peruvian-American artist whose hyperreal depictions of fantasy heroes and gods revolutionized genre art in the 1970s, remains one of the most influential illustrators of his time. His collaborations with Marvel Comics, his book and calendar series with Julie Bell, and his covers for hundreds of science fiction and fantasy novels have defined the aesthetic of modern myth. Vallejo’s works are revered for their blend of power, sensuality, and imagination — living testaments to the heroic spirit of storytelling.
Julie Bell, Vallejo’s creative partner and one of the most acclaimed fantasy and wildlife painters of her generation, will join him onstage. Known for her dynamic compositions and luminous technique, Bell’s career spans comic book covers, trading cards, and fine art wildlife painting. Her dual focus on fantasy and realism has earned her global acclaim, including the title of Living Master by the Art Renewal Center.
Together, Vallejo and Bell embody the eternal dialogue between myth and modernity — and their work, like JR’s and Scorsese’s, exemplifies the museum’s mission: to celebrate narrative art in all its forms.
A Glimpse of What’s to Come
The Lucas Museum’s upcoming debut in Los Angeles marks one of the most ambitious cultural projects of the decade — a space where art history and imagination converge. Sunday’s panel wasn’t just a Comic Con highlight; it was a testament to the museum’s guiding principle: that narrative art, whether painted, drawn, photographed, or filmed, remains our most enduring form of connection.
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The Lucas Museum panel promises to be one of New York Comic Con’s most meaningful events — not just a preview, but a celebration of visual storytelling’s shared DNA. Through renderings, behind-the-scenes imagery, and a discussion led by four masters of their crafts, the session will offer a rare look at how art, film, and imagination will soon converge under one roof.
For fans, creators, and historians alike, Sneak Peek: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art represents the museum’s first major public appearance before its 2026 debut — a moment where vision becomes reality.
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