After more than a decade in the making, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art throws open its doors in Los Angeles on September 22 — and it's not the Star Wars shrine many expected. George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson (once chair of DreamWorks Animation) have built something far broader: an institution that puts comic books, murals, movie props and fine art on equal footing.

The museum sits in Exposition Park, on a spot that used to be a parking lot. Architect Ma Yansong designed the 300,000-square-foot building as a smooth, white, curving form with no straight lines — he described it as 'light and free as a cloud'. Most parking is tucked underground, so visitors emerge into 13 acres of contoured green space and gardens shaped by landscape architect Mia Lehrer, dotted with 10 outdoor sculptures including a Fernando Botero bronze called Maternity.

Inside are more than 30 galleries drawn from a collection of over 40,000 works that Lucas has been assembling since his college days. The range is deliberately wide: Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo hang alongside underground comix legend Robert Crumb, Garfield creator Jim Davis and Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. Galleries are organised by theme — think 'Motherhood' and 'Sports' — rather than by movement or era, an attempt to flatten the usual art-world hierarchy.

One of the museum's most heavily represented artists is Ernie Barnes, the former NFL offensive guard nicknamed the 'Rembrandt of the Broncos', who painted the cover of Marvin Gaye's I Want You and served as official artist of the 1984 LA Olympics — yet was long ignored by the mainstream art world. Lucas calls the collection 'the people's art', and accessibility is clearly the point.

The opening programme is substantial. Visitors start on the first floor with 'The History of Native Art: Heroes, Myth, The Sacred', which pairs museum pieces with recreations of famous narrative images, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling to the Hagia Sophia interior. The fifth floor is given to murals — Diego Rivera and French contemporary JR among them — plus Banksy's Girl with Balloon and work created specially for the museum.

Movie fans aren't forgotten. The 'Star Wars in Motion' gallery showcases vehicles from the first six films, and there are Indiana Jones props and recreations too. Beyond the galleries, there are two theatres (one for documentaries, one for experimental shorts), the Skywalker Grill restaurant, and a free three-storey research library.

Why should travellers care? It's a genuinely new anchor for a corner of LA that already holds the California Science Center and the Natural History Museum, and it makes a strong case for a full day in Exposition Park — especially when the weather's good and the gardens are worth lingering in. Anyone with even a passing interest in illustration, film or pop culture will find plenty that traditional museums rarely show.

Story via Condé Nast Traveler.