Billion-Dollar Lucas Museum Opens in LA, Blending Banksy and Wall Street

On September 22, Mellody Hobson and her husband will open the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. The project, which did not rely on public funding, cost about $1 billion.

Hobson shares the chair of the museum's board. She is also co-CEO of Ariel Investments and a member of the JPMorgan Chase board, where she serves on the risk committee.

The Museum's Financial Side Connects to JPMorgan

Hobson became a JPMorgan board member in 2018. She has been co-CEO of Ariel Investments since 2019, having previously held the role of president from 2000 onward. Meanwhile, the bank she helps govern has become a prominent institutional voice in the digital asset space.

JPMorgan's blockchain arm, Kinexys, has handled more than $3 trillion since it launched. It currently processes over $5 billion per day on average. This year, the bank made its JPM Coin deposit token, JPMD, available to institutional clients on Base — the Ethereum layer-2 network created by Coinbase.

In July, South Korea's KB Kookmin Bank announced it would begin routing dollar trade payments through JPMorgan's Kinexys network starting in August. Consequently, the risk committee Hobson participates in oversees a lender that already settles billions of dollars onchain. Separately, Strategy ranked JPMorgan behind Fidelity in its Bitcoin banking index.

A Banksy Gallery Sits Upstairs in the Lucas Museum

"Is it fine art? No, it's finer art." – George Lucas

Lucas focused the collection on narrative instead of abstraction. Attendees will see works by Frida Kahlo and Norman Rockwell next to Luke's landspeeder and General Grievous's wheel bike. The museum contains more than 1,300 pieces and 30,000 comic books.

Curators added two walls of Banksy pieces to the fifth-floor murals gallery shortly before opening. One features the silhouette of a girl releasing a heart-shaped balloon. The same gallery also includes works by Diego Rivera, Judith Baca and JR.

Lucas pursued locations in San Francisco and Chicago for over a decade before Los Angeles agreed to host the museum. Hobson now works across both domains. One houses Star Wars props; the other influences how quickly major banks move tokenized money.