INYIM Gets a First Look Inside TASCHEN’s Stunning New Lucas Museum Book

This Is the Kind of Art Book You Leave Out on Purpose

INYIM is getting an early visual look at the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art publication from TASCHEN, and this is one of those art books that immediately makes you start mentally clearing space on the coffee table.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art press team shared the announcement with INYIM Media along with an unusually generous set of TASCHEN photography, giving us a detailed preview of the books, their presentation and dozens of interior spreads ahead of publication. The takeaway comes quickly: this is not being treated as an afterthought to the museum opening. The book is an event of its own.

Created in collaboration with George Lucas and the Lucas Museum, the project accompanies the museum’s inaugural exhibition and follows visual storytelling across centuries, cultures and mediums — from painting, illustration and photography to comics, children’s books and cinema. It is the kind of broad creative collision that INYIM has always thrived on.

A Two-Volume Art Object Built to Be Explored

The flagship Classic edition is the big one: two hardcover volumes housed in an illustrated slipcase, measuring about 9.6 by 12 inches and running 832 pages in total. TASCHEN lists the set at more than 13 pounds — so yes, this is very much a sit-down-and-get-lost-in-it book rather than something you casually toss into a tote.

At the time of publication, TASCHEN’s U.S. store lists the Classic edition for $200, with availability beginning October 4, 2026. The museum’s announcement also details a more compact 45 edition, while a miniature Piccolo edition will be available exclusively through Lucas Museum retail outlets.

The presentation matters here. TASCHEN has built its reputation on making books that feel physical — scale, paper, printing and reproduction are part of the experience — and the press photography makes that attention especially easy to see. The orange spines, illustrated slipcase, ribbon markers and oversized spreads give the Classic edition the presence of something meant to stay visible in a room.

Basically, It’s an Adult Picture Book — in the Best Way

What we love most from this first look is how approachable it appears. Visually, it feels almost like an adult picture book for people who never stopped loving images: huge reproductions are allowed to breathe, while descriptions and contextual text give you enough information to understand why something matters without turning every page into an art-history lecture.

One spread can send you into classic illustration, another into photography, another into comics, fantasy or film. Some pages are dense with smaller images and visual references; others hand most of the real estate to a single work. That rhythm makes the books look less like something you have to read dutifully from page one and more like something you can open anywhere, follow your eye and disappear into for twenty minutes.

That is an important distinction. A museum catalogue can be beautiful and still feel academic. From what TASCHEN and the Lucas Museum have shown us, this project wants to be used — browsed, revisited, left open, shown to somebody across the room and picked up again because one image led you to another.

George Lucas, Guillermo del Toro and a Wildly Broad Visual World

The books feature texts by George Lucas and Guillermo del Toro, with an introduction by Lucas Museum Senior Curator and Head of Film Programs Ryan Linkof and editing by author and filmmaker Jessica Hundley. Across the volumes, artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Jessie Willcox Smith, Frank Frazetta, Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell and N. C. Wyeth appear alongside photography, comics, children’s illustration and moving-image culture.

That mix is really the point. The museum’s idea of narrative art does not put a velvet rope between “fine art” and the images people actually grow up with. A magazine illustration, comic panel, production painting or cinematic design can sit within the same larger conversation about how pictures teach us to imagine people, places, danger, romance, adventure and entire worlds that do not exist.

Naturally, Star Wars gets its moment. A dedicated cinema section brings together original production art and concept paintings with costumes and vehicles, tracing the collaborative process that helped turn ideas on paper into one of popular culture’s most enduring visual universes. For anyone fascinated by the machinery behind filmmaking — not just the finished movie — those pages alone are going to be catnip.

And Yes, Los Angeles Is Very Ready for This Museum

As Los Angeles natives, we have also been watching the Lucas Museum itself take shape with real anticipation. INYIM thrives on creativity — music, fashion, photography, film, art, design and all the places where those things unexpectedly crash into each other — so a new institution devoted to the way images tell stories feels especially at home here.

There is something particularly satisfying about seeing that kind of cultural energy arrive on a side of Exposition Park that has too often felt outside the glossy version of Los Angeles’ cultural conversation. When the museum opens on September 22, 2026, we hope it becomes exactly what the scale of the project suggests it can be: a new creative hub where film lovers, painters, photographers, illustrators, designers, comic fans, students, families and people who simply love a great image can all find a way in.

Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum occupies a five-story, roughly 300,000-square-foot building designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec, set within a 13-acre campus and park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. Its permanent collection numbers more than 40,000 works, with 35 galleries occupying about 100,000 square feet of exhibition space.

But that is the museum story — and we will have plenty more to say about that as opening day approaches. For now, the book deserves its own spotlight.

Take a Much Closer Look at the TASCHEN Edition

The Lucas Museum press team gave us plenty to look through, so we are not going to hide it behind one product shot. Below is the full set of TASCHEN photography provided to INYIM Media for this preview — from the slipcase and individual volumes to the interior spreads that make the scale and range of the project much easier to appreciate.

If these photographs are any indication, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is shaping up to be the rare exhibition publication that works equally well as a serious visual reference and as something you can simply open because you want to see something beautiful. That balance may be its best sales pitch.

Special thanks: INYIM Media extends a sincere thank-you to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art press team for including us in this announcement and for providing the extensive TASCHEN photography used throughout this feature. Pre-order the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art book directly from TASCHEN, and plan a visit to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art ahead of its September 22 opening. Source: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art press materials. Photos: TASCHEN.