From Banksy murals to original Peanuts comic strips to, of course, “Star Wars” artifacts, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is filled with a wide range of narrative art, which USC alum and “Star Wars” creator George Lucas described as “the people’s art.” 

Set to open to the public on Sept. 22, the Daily Trojan got a special first look inside the newest Exposition Park museum.

Designed by architect Ma Yansong, construction on the futuristic, abstract building began over eight years ago but has been a work in progress for about 17 years, Lucas said in a press conference Wednesday.

Founded by Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, the museum sits on a 13-acre campus featuring landscaped gardens that surround a 300,000-square-foot building. Expo Park wasn’t always planned to be the museum’s home — a lawsuit attempting to block the museum from being built in Chicago led the couple to decide on Los Angeles as its location.

“I’m used to doing the impossible. This one almost broke my will, but the great people that we’ve assembled to do this [have] been a big advantage,” Lucas said. “This is a big celebration for us because it’s taken so long to get here.”

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Trojan, senior curator and head of film programs Ryan Linkof said the museum is about shared humanity and exploring how all human societies have used images to tell stories. Linkof is a former USC professor and an alum, having received his doctorate in history in 2011.

“This is ultimately a place about humanity’s endless creativity,” Linkof said in the press conference. “It’s a place to show how visual storytelling is a fundamental part of society in all places and at all times, and helps to shape who we are, what we believe and who we aspire to be.”

Linkof said he credits relationships he formed through USC and his mentor, Vanessa Schwartz, a professor of art history, history and critical studies at USC, for his professional development. Linkof previously served as a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

“I have just an enormous amount of gratitude to the experiences I’ve had through USC,” Linkof said. “[Schwartz’s] scholarship has been really important to me in thinking beyond the frontiers of any discipline, which has really prepared me for the work here, which is really about thinking about visual culture in the broadest possible way.”

Most of the Lucas Museum’s exhibit space is on its fourth floor, with over 30 exhibits exploring romance, adventure, children’s stories, comics and more. The cinema exhibit was packed with Star Wars artifacts from the original and prequel trilogies. Costumes, concept art, photos from the set and spaceship models, like Luke Skywalker’s X-34 Landspeeder, will be on display when the museum opens.

The museum’s ground floor also features an exhibit titled “The History of Narrative Art,” featuring recreations and digitized versions of infamous narrative art pieces, which are works that represent or allude to stories, like the Aztec Sun Stone” and Michelangelo’s “David.” 

“You don’t really get to see this kind of material elsewhere,” Linkof said. “We have the research library … which is a resource in terms of learning about the history of narrative art.”

The Lucas Museum’s CEO, Tracey Bates, also announced Wednesday that a new Banksy sculpture was added to the museum’s collection. Located outside the children’s stories exhibit, the piece depicts two ornamental lion statues with one holding a lion tamer’s baton in its mouth and paint mimicking blood splattered on it.

“Banksy snuck in just a few short days ago. He has left a little bit of a mess, but it’s a mess we’re excited to show you,” Bates said. “The galleries are filled with everything, from the magical comic visions of Jack Kirby and Winsor McCay to the satire of Robert Crumb and Robert Colescott.”

Yansong, who is also the founder of MAD Architects, said the building is a dream come true. He said narrative architecture should be about addressing functionality but also the history of the people and context around a building. 

“[It] used to be a parking lot, but now we want to make more landscape for people, so the building has to float,” Yasong said. “We want to make architecture make people curious — that attracts young people and a lot of visitors. They come here, and they want to discover what’s in there. I don’t want to tell them what this is about.”

Hobson said the Lucas Museum is a museum “by the people, for the people.” She said Lucas personally curated the museum piece by piece and aspired to create a building so unique that “eight-year-olds and 80-year-olds would equally want to come inside.” 

“This narrative art is important because it depicts the myths that anchor us, the stories that we believe in,” Hobson said. “They may not necessarily be true, but they unite us as families, as communities, as countries, as nations.”