Exposition Park Museum Openings in Fall 2026, Explained

Two institutions are about to open across the same stretch of Exposition Park, each with a different approach to access. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the general public on September 22, but it opened to the 90037 zip code nine days earlier, on September 13, at a Neighborhood Preview Day distributed through local community partners. The California Science Center's Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens November 13, and when it does, it joins a museum that has never charged general admission for its permanent galleries in the first place. One of these institutions is a brand-new, billion-dollar private museum. The other is a 75-year-old state agency. Their different approaches to access are worth more attention than the exhibits themselves.

Two Institutions, Different Approaches to Access

If you've read anything about the Lucas Museum this year, you've read about George Lucas's comic book collection, the Ma Yansong-designed building with no straight lines, or the Star Wars props sitting a few galleries down from Frida Kahlo. What gets less coverage is the LM37 pass: a permanent, ongoing free-admission program built exclusively for people who live in the museum's own zip code. Not "Angelenos welcome" in the abstract. Not a single discount day. A standing pass, renewable, that lets a 90037 resident and one guest walk in free every time, with proof of address checked on the first visit.

That's an unusual structural choice for an institution that spent thirteen years and roughly a billion dollars getting built. It's less unusual, though, if you look next door at the Natural History Museum, which made a version of the same bet three years earlier. When NHM went looking for a new food and beverage partner for its Commons expansion, it didn't take the easiest path and sign with a national contractor. It ran a competitive process that South LA Cafe won against much larger companies, then handed the winner a ten-year contract to run the museum's restaurant, its new grab-and-go café, and all of its catering. As reported by Los Angeles magazine, Celia Ward-Wallace, who co-founded South LA Cafe with her husband Joe, described the pitch this way:

"Think of Starbucks with soul."

The Lucas Museum's CEO, Tracey Bates, was quoted by Time Out Los Angeles as saying: "we're really excited to bring such a significant art museum to South Central." The Lucas Museum and the California Science Center make access tangible in different ways, from a zip-code pass to free admission to permanent galleries. That's the pattern. Everything else below is evidence of how it plays out on the ground this fall.

What Opens September 22

The Lucas Museum sits on an 11-acre campus at One Lucas Plaza, directly across from the Natural History Museum. General admission is $25 for adults and $21 for seniors, with free entry for anyone 17 or younger, active-duty military, and EBT cardholders. Tickets are timed-entry and must be booked in advance even when admission is free, and reservations are currently open for visits through the end of February 2027.

You don't need a ticket at all to walk the museum's gardens, library, shop, café, or restaurant. The building itself is designed to be porous that way. A 185-foot arched steel canopy lifts the structure off the ground, creating a covered public plaza that stays open regardless of what's happening in the galleries above it. Two drop-in theaters, the Robert Flaherty Theater and the Slavko Vorkapich Theater, are included with paid admission and run documentary and experimental film programming alongside the permanent collection.

For residents of 90037 specifically, the LM37 pass is the detail that matters more than any single exhibit. Registration opened in August, and the museum has said it will keep expanding community programming, including after-hours events and performances in the surrounding gardens, once the initial opening rush settles.

What Opens November 13

Two months after the Lucas Museum opens, the California Science Center debuts the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, a 200,000-square-foot addition designed by ZGF Architects that will finally give Space Shuttle Endeavour a permanent, vertical launch-position display. Endeavour has been off view since 2023 while the building went up around it, a wait that will have run three years by the time doors open. The Science Center's general admission for its permanent galleries has always been free, and that policy extends to the new wing. Special exhibitions, IMAX screenings, and hands-on activities like the climbing wall still carry separate charges, but the core experience, including Endeavour itself, does not.

That's worth sitting with for a second. A California state agency is about to unveil one of the more technically ambitious museum additions in the country, and the price of admission for most of it will still be zero. It's a different kind of free access from LM37: not a special carve-out for neighbors, but a baseline policy the institution has held for decades.

What's Already Free This Week

You don't have to wait for either opening to spend a morning in the park. The Exposition Park Rose Garden, a seven-acre sunken garden listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to dusk, no ticket required, with more than 200 rose varieties in bloom from April through December.

At the Natural History Museum, the Commons wing has been open and free since November 2024, and it's worth a visit on its own terms:

• Gnatalie, a 75-foot sauropod skeleton with distinctive green-tinted bones, discovered and excavated by NHM's own Dinosaur Institute
• L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, Barbara Carrasco's landmark 80-foot mural, once controversial enough to be hidden away for years before finding a permanent home here
• The South LA Cafe counter on the Commons plaza, serving the same coffee and grab-and-go menu the company built its reputation on at its original Western Avenue location, now under a ten-year hospitality contract with the museum

None of this requires a ticket. The Commons was designed as what NHM calls a "front porch," a way to interact with the museum without ever buying admission to the galleries behind it.

Getting There Without a Car

The Expo/Vermont E Line station sits at the edge of the park, at the intersection of Exposition Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, and puts you within walking distance of every building mentioned here. The Vermont/39th bus stop, served by Metro Lines 204 and 754, is adjacent to the Lucas Museum entrance. If you're coming from Downtown on the J Line, the 37th Street/USC station leaves a walk of roughly 10 to 15 minutes through the park itself, which is closed to through traffic and functions more like a campus than a city block.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

The easy version of this story is "two big museums are opening near you." The more useful version is that Exposition Park's institutions offer several concrete benefits nearby: a free pass tied to a specific zip code, a decade-long contract awarded to a local, minority-owned hospitality company over national competitors, and permanent galleries at a state science museum that have always been free.

Whether or not you ever set foot in a gallery, these examples show two different ways Exposition Park institutions make access part of the experience as the park is built out for the next decade.

If you're weighing what a home near a park like this is actually worth, in the context of what's opening and what's already free, The Jones Group Realtors has spent decades reading South LA block by block. Schedule a free consultation to talk through what these changes mean for your street specifically.