Filmmaker and multibillionaire George Lucas announced nearly a decade ago that, despite all of his and his companies’ ties to the Bay Area, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art would be in Los Angeles instead of on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. It’s a project at least 17 years in the making — or 49 years, if you factor in the release of the first “Star Wars” movie in 1977 that vaulted Lucas to the kind of fame and riches that allow for a personal museum to be built.

After a reported $1 billion spent, the museum finally opened in Exposition Park on Sept. 22, looking, in true Lucas form, like a giant spaceship that touched down next to the University of Southern California’s famed Memorial Coliseum. 

Dedicated to the tradition of visual storytelling (it’s far more than just a “Star Wars” fan space), the 300,000-square-foot museum is a stunning, futuristic marvel of architecture, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec. With its star-studded premiere night, attended by everyone from Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, to Tom Cruise, and the property’s endless media coverage over the past decade-plus, it’s safe to say the Lucas Museum is one of the biggest openings, period, in LA in recent years.

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And much like Lucas himself, it’s a study in high art versus lowbrow pleasures. 

“Star Wars” ephemera, including a costume for the character Darth Maul, is on display at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

A gallery at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

The galleries are filled with pieces from Lucas’ private collection culled over the past five decades — and what’s striking is the contrast of seeing so-called “important” works in the same museum alongside an entire section of comic and cartoon art ranging from the first “Flash Gordon” strip to “Garfield.” Within feet of each other in one gallery, visitors can view a........

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