The podracer is real. So are the costumes, the models and the concept art filling the Cinema gallery at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens to the public on September 22 in Exposition Park. We got an early look at the Star Wars material on September 6.
These are all actual props and costumes from Star Wars movies that are on display at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art! It was so cool being this close to so much Star Wars history. And yes, that’s the actual Podracer from Episode I! (1/5)
— The Disney Scoop (@DisneyScoopGuy) September 6, 2026
Star Wars In Motion
The inaugural Cinema gallery installation is titled Star Wars in Motion, and it is built around one idea rather than a greatest-hits display. The exhibition is about the vehicles of the first six films, the high-speed racers and hulking transports and flying vessels, running from Luke’s Landspeeder in the 1977 original to the first physical build of General Grievous’s wheel bike from Revenge of the Sith.
Everything is drawn from the Lucas Archives, so concept designs and production paperwork sit alongside the physical objects rather than behind them. The Anakin Skywalker podracer from The Phantom Menace is the piece that stops people, and it is the actual build rather than a replica.
It is one of more than thirty installations opening with the museum.
This Is Not A Star Wars Museum
George Lucas and Mellody Hobson have been consistent that the building is about narrative art broadly, not about the franchise that paid for it. The permanent collection runs past 40,000 works and spans illustration, muralism, comic art, children’s book imagery, science-fiction illustration and photography.
Individual galleries honor Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Jessie Willcox Smith, Maxfield Parrish, Frank Frazetta and Thomas Hart Benton. Elsewhere the walls carry George Herriman, Charles Schulz, Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Takashi Murakami, Robert Capa, Gordon Parks, Diego Rivera, JR and Judith F. Baca. There is a Banksy in the building, which we also filmed on the same visit.
Lucas has called the place a museum of the people’s art. The collection backs him up, putting comic pages and magazine illustration on the same footing as Renaissance painting.
From Failed Bids To Exposition Park
Lucas pursued sites in San Francisco and Chicago before Exposition Park won it. Ground was broken in March 2018 just west of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the opening slipped repeatedly before landing on September 22, 2026.
What got built is a 300,000-square-foot building designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects with Stantec as executive architect, and landscape work by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. Its exterior is clad in more than 1,200 curved panels of fiberglass-reinforced polymer, chosen because the material holds smooth flowing shapes at low weight. Inside are thirty-five galleries totaling 100,000 square feet, two theaters, a library, community and education spaces, a cafe, a restaurant and a store. The museum sits on an eleven acre site that used to be surface parking, and the paths, planting and gathering areas around it are open to walk through without a ticket.
It sits alongside the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California African American Museum, which makes Exposition Park an unusually dense afternoon.
Hours And What Comes Next
The museum runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, with last entry 45 minutes before closing. It is closed Tuesdays, which makes the September 22 opening, a Tuesday, the exception rather than the pattern.
The timing lines up with the franchise’s 50th anniversary year. The 1977 film returns to theaters on February 19, 2027, when Star Wars goes to IMAX 70mm for the first time, followed by Starfighter on May 28.
Between now and then, the vehicles that made those films are sitting in a gallery in Los Angeles, and the grounds are free to walk through whether you buy a ticket or not.
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