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Museum of Jurassic Technology

February 15, 2024

The Museum of Jurassic Technology at 9341 Venice Boulevard in the Palms district of Los Angeles, California, was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson in 1988.[1][2] It calls itself "an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic",[3] the relevance of the term "Lower Jurassic" to the museum's collections being left uncertain and unexplained.[4]

Museum of Jurassic Technology, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, served by the Culver City, California, post office
Rotten Luck: Decaying Dice of Ricky Jay
Fairly Safely Venture: String Figures and their Venerable Collectors

The museum's collection includes a mixture of artistic, scientific, ethnographic, and historic items, as well as some unclassifiable exhibits; the diversity evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 16th-century predecessors of modern natural-history museums. The factual claims of many of the museum's exhibits strain credibility, provoking an array of interpretations.

David Hildebrand Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2001.[5][6]

Overview edit

The museum contains an unusual collection of exhibits and objects with varying and uncertain degrees of authenticity. The New York Times critic Edward Rothstein described it as a "museum about museums", "where the persistent question is: what kind of place is this?"[4] Smithsonian magazine called it "a witty, self-conscious homage to private museums of yore . . . when natural history was only barely charted by science, and museums were closer to Renaissance cabinets of curiosity."[2] In a similar vein, The Economist said the museum "captures a time chronicled in Richard Holmes's recent book The Age of Wonder, when science mingled with poetry in its pursuit of answers to life's mysterious questions."[7]

Lawrence Weschler's 1995 book, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, And Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, attempts to explain the mystery of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Weschler deeply explores the museum through conversations with its founder, David Wilson, and through outside research on several exhibitions. His investigations into the history of certain exhibits led to varying results of authenticity; some exhibits seem to have been created by Wilson's imagination while other exhibits might be suitable for display in a natural history museum. The Museum of Jurassic Technology at its heart, according to Wilson, is "a museum interested in presenting phenomena that other natural history museums are unwilling to present."[8]

The museum's introductory slideshow recounts that "In its original sense, the term, 'museum' meant 'a spot dedicated to the Muses, a place where man's mind could attain a mood of aloofness above everyday affairs'". In this spirit, the dimly lit atmosphere, wood and glass vitrines, and labyrinthine floorplan lead visitors through an eclectic range of exhibits on art, natural history, history of science, philosophy, and anthropology, with a special focus on the history of museums and the variety of paths to knowledge. The museum attracts approximately 25,000 visitors per year.[9]

Exhibits edit

The museum maintains more than thirty permanent exhibits, including:

  • The Delani/Sonnabend Halls: Recalling the intertwining story of an ill-fated opera singer, Madalena Delani, with a theoretician of memory, Geoffrey Sonnabend, whose three-part work Obliscence: Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter suggests that memory is an elaborate construction that humankind has created "to buffer ourselves against the intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time and the irretrievability of its moments and events." There is only experience and the decay of experience, an idea he illustrates with a complex diagram of a plane intersecting a cone.
  • Tell the Bees: Belief, Knowledge, and Hypersymbolic Cognition: An exhibit of pre-scientific cures and remedies
  • The Garden of Eden on Wheels: Collections from Los Angeles Area Trailer Parks
  • The Unique World of Microminiatures of Hagop Sandaldjian: A collection of micro-miniature sculptures, each carved from a single human hair and placed within the eye of a needle. Currently on display: Goofy, Pope John Paul II, and Napoleon I. Other microminiatures include violins; dancers; a crucifix (made of a single strand of the artist's hair and gold); characters like Donald Duck, Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; a self-portrait; a golf player; and a baseball player swinging his bat.
  • Micromosaics of Harold "Henry" Dalton: Microscopic mosaics from the 19th century depicting flowers, animals, and other objects, made entirely from individual butterfly wing scales and diatoms
  • The Stereofloral Radiographs of Albert G. Richards: A collection of stereographic radiographs of flowers
  • Rotten Luck: The Decaying Dice of Ricky Jay: A collection of decomposing antique dice once owned by magician Ricky Jay and documented in his book Dice: Deception, Fate, and Rotten Luck
  • No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mt. Wilson Observatory : A small room dedicated to unusual letters and theories received by the Mount Wilson Observatory circa 1915–1935
  • The World is Bound with Secret Knots: The Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher: A survey of the fields of study, writings and inventions of the 17th-century Jesuit polymath who was the founder of the Kircherian Museum in Rome
  • The Lives of Perfect Creatures: The Dogs of the Soviet Space Program: An oil portrait gallery of the heroic cosmonaut canines
  • Fairly Safely Venture: String Figures from Many Lands and their Venerable Collectors

From 1992 to 2006, the museum's Foundation Collection was on display in its Tochtermuseum at the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum in Hagen, Germany. This exhibition was part of the Museum of Museums wing at the KEOM, which came into being under the stewardship of director Michael Fehr.[10]

Auxiliary functions edit

In 2005, the museum opened its Tula Tea Room, a Russian-style tea room where Georgian tea and accompanying cookies are served, the cost covered by the price of admission.[11] This room is a miniature reconstruction of the study of Tsar Nicolas II from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.[citation needed] The tea room is shared with a number of live doves and other birds.[11][12]

The Borzoi Kabinet Theater screens a series of poetic documentaries produced by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in collaboration with the St. Petersburg–based arts and science collective Kabinet. The series of films, entitled A Chain of Flowers, draws its name from the quotation by Charles Willson Peale: "The Learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life". The titles of the films are Levsha: The Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea (2001), Obshee Delo: The Common Task (2005), Bol'shoe Sovietskaia Zatmenie: The Great Soviet Eclipse (2008), The Book of Wisdom and Lies (2011), and Language of the Birds (2012).

In popular culture edit

The museum was the subject of a 1995 book by Lawrence Weschler entitled Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, which describes in detail many of its exhibits. The museum is mentioned in the 2008 novel The Museum of Innocence, by Turkish Nobel-laureate Orhan Pamuk.

References edit

  1. ^ David Wharton, "Weird Science : Palms' quirky Museum of Jurassic Technology offers curioser and curioser displays, likely to prompt more questions than they answer" 2015-04-05 at the Wayback Machine, Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1989.
  2. ^ a b Tony Perrottet, " The Museum of Jurassic Technology: A throwback to the private museums of earlier centuries, this Los Angeles spot has a true hodgepodge of natural history artifacts" 2013-01-17 at the Wayback Machine, Smithsonian, June 2011.
  3. ^ "Introduction and Background" 2012-10-14 at the Wayback Machine at Museum of Jurassic Technology official website (accessed 2012-10-10).
  4. ^ a b Edward Rothstein, "Where Outlandish Meets Landish" 2017-03-13 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, January 9, 2012.
  5. ^ MacArthur Foundation Fellows List, 2001 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ "Jurassic Genius David Wilson: Offbeat Museum Curator Wins Prestigious 'Genius Grant'" 2018-04-04 at the Wayback Machine, NPR, October 27, 2001.
  7. ^ "A cabinet of wonder: A Los Angeles museum filled with curio and mystery" 2014-05-05 at the Wayback Machine, The Economist, September 10, 2009.
  8. ^ Weschler, Lawrence (1995). Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, And Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. New York: Random House.
  9. ^ Perrottet, Tony. "The Museum of Jurassic Technology". Smithsonian. from the original on 2018-09-28. Retrieved 2018-09-27.
  10. ^ Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum Hagen 2018-04-04 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  11. ^ a b Jones, Oliver (2015-08-04). "An Afternoon in The Museum of Jurassic Technology: The 'Strangest Museum in America'". The Daily Beast. from the original on 2023-04-30. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  12. ^ Blitz, Matt. "Inside Los Angeles's Strangest Museum". Smithsonian Magazine. from the original on 2022-12-27. Retrieved 2023-04-30.

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Museum of Jurassic Technology.
  • Official website
  • Roadtrip America: A Separate Reality
  • NPR Archives:Jurassic Genius David Wilson
  • Jeanne Scheper, Interview with David Wilson, Other Voices, vol. 3, no. 1
  • Mark Edward's Skeptiblog "A Museum that makes you think" 2010

34°01′33″N 118°23′42″W / 34.02586°N 118.3950°W / 34.02586; -118.3950

February 15, 2024
museum, jurassic, technology, 9341, venice, boulevard, palms, district, angeles, california, founded, david, hildebrand, wilson, diana, drake, wilson, 1988, calls, itself, educational, institution, dedicated, advancement, knowledge, public, appreciation, lower. The Museum of Jurassic Technology at 9341 Venice Boulevard in the Palms district of Los Angeles California was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson in 1988 1 2 It calls itself an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic 3 the relevance of the term Lower Jurassic to the museum s collections being left uncertain and unexplained 4 Museum of Jurassic Technology 9341 Venice Boulevard Los Angeles served by the Culver City California post officeRotten Luck Decaying Dice of Ricky JayFairly Safely Venture String Figures and their Venerable CollectorsThe museum s collection includes a mixture of artistic scientific ethnographic and historic items as well as some unclassifiable exhibits the diversity evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 16th century predecessors of modern natural history museums The factual claims of many of the museum s exhibits strain credibility provoking an array of interpretations David Hildebrand Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2001 5 6 Contents 1 Overview 2 Exhibits 3 Auxiliary functions 4 In popular culture 5 References 6 External linksOverview editThe museum contains an unusual collection of exhibits and objects with varying and uncertain degrees of authenticity The New York Times critic Edward Rothstein described it as a museum about museums where the persistent question is what kind of place is this 4 Smithsonian magazine called it a witty self conscious homage to private museums of yore when natural history was only barely charted by science and museums were closer to Renaissance cabinets of curiosity 2 In a similar vein The Economist said the museum captures a time chronicled in Richard Holmes s recent book The Age of Wonder when science mingled with poetry in its pursuit of answers to life s mysterious questions 7 Lawrence Weschler s 1995 book Mr Wilson s Cabinet of Wonder Pronged Ants Horned Humans Mice on Toast And Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology attempts to explain the mystery of the Museum of Jurassic Technology Weschler deeply explores the museum through conversations with its founder David Wilson and through outside research on several exhibitions His investigations into the history of certain exhibits led to varying results of authenticity some exhibits seem to have been created by Wilson s imagination while other exhibits might be suitable for display in a natural history museum The Museum of Jurassic Technology at its heart according to Wilson is a museum interested in presenting phenomena that other natural history museums are unwilling to present 8 The museum s introductory slideshow recounts that In its original sense the term museum meant a spot dedicated to the Muses a place where man s mind could attain a mood of aloofness above everyday affairs In this spirit the dimly lit atmosphere wood and glass vitrines and labyrinthine floorplan lead visitors through an eclectic range of exhibits on art natural history history of science philosophy and anthropology with a special focus on the history of museums and the variety of paths to knowledge The museum attracts approximately 25 000 visitors per year 9 Exhibits editThe museum maintains more than thirty permanent exhibits including The Delani Sonnabend Halls Recalling the intertwining story of an ill fated opera singer Madalena Delani with a theoretician of memory Geoffrey Sonnabend whose three part work Obliscence Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter suggests that memory is an elaborate construction that humankind has created to buffer ourselves against the intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time and the irretrievability of its moments and events There is only experience and the decay of experience an idea he illustrates with a complex diagram of a plane intersecting a cone Tell the Bees Belief Knowledge and Hypersymbolic Cognition An exhibit of pre scientific cures and remedies The Garden of Eden on Wheels Collections from Los Angeles Area Trailer Parks The Unique World of Microminiatures of Hagop Sandaldjian A collection of micro miniature sculptures each carved from a single human hair and placed within the eye of a needle Currently on display Goofy Pope John Paul II and Napoleon I Other microminiatures include violins dancers a crucifix made of a single strand of the artist s hair and gold characters like Donald Duck Pinocchio Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a self portrait a golf player and a baseball player swinging his bat Micromosaics of Harold Henry Dalton Microscopic mosaics from the 19th century depicting flowers animals and other objects made entirely from individual butterfly wing scales and diatoms The Stereofloral Radiographs of Albert G Richards A collection of stereographic radiographs of flowers Rotten Luck The Decaying Dice of Ricky Jay A collection of decomposing antique dice once owned by magician Ricky Jay and documented in his book Dice Deception Fate and Rotten Luck No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again Letters to Mt Wilson Observatory A small room dedicated to unusual letters and theories received by the Mount Wilson Observatory circa 1915 1935 The World is Bound with Secret Knots The Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher A survey of the fields of study writings and inventions of the 17th century Jesuit polymath who was the founder of the Kircherian Museum in Rome The Lives of Perfect Creatures The Dogs of the Soviet Space Program An oil portrait gallery of the heroic cosmonaut canines Fairly Safely Venture String Figures from Many Lands and their Venerable CollectorsFrom 1992 to 2006 the museum s Foundation Collection was on display in its Tochtermuseum at the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen Germany This exhibition was part of the Museum of Museums wing at the KEOM which came into being under the stewardship of director Michael Fehr 10 Auxiliary functions editIn 2005 the museum opened its Tula Tea Room a Russian style tea room where Georgian tea and accompanying cookies are served the cost covered by the price of admission 11 This room is a miniature reconstruction of the study of Tsar Nicolas II from the Winter Palace in St Petersburg Russia citation needed The tea room is shared with a number of live doves and other birds 11 12 The Borzoi Kabinet Theater screens a series of poetic documentaries produced by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in collaboration with the St Petersburg based arts and science collective Kabinet The series of films entitled A Chain of Flowers draws its name from the quotation by Charles Willson Peale The Learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar guided along as it were a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life The titles of the films are Levsha The Cross eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea 2001 Obshee Delo The Common Task 2005 Bol shoe Sovietskaia Zatmenie The Great Soviet Eclipse 2008 The Book of Wisdom and Lies 2011 and Language of the Birds 2012 In popular culture editThe museum was the subject of a 1995 book by Lawrence Weschler entitled Mr Wilson s Cabinet of Wonder Pronged Ants Horned Humans Mice on Toast and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology which describes in detail many of its exhibits The museum is mentioned in the 2008 novel The Museum of Innocence by Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk References edit David Wharton Weird Science Palms quirky Museum of Jurassic Technology offers curioser and curioser displays likely to prompt more questions than they answer Archived 2015 04 05 at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times December 31 1989 a b Tony Perrottet The Museum of Jurassic Technology A throwback to the private museums of earlier centuries this Los Angeles spot has a true hodgepodge of natural history artifacts Archived 2013 01 17 at the Wayback Machine Smithsonian June 2011 Introduction and Background Archived 2012 10 14 at the Wayback Machine at Museum of Jurassic Technology official website accessed 2012 10 10 a b Edward Rothstein Where Outlandish Meets Landish Archived 2017 03 13 at the Wayback Machine The New York Times January 9 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellows List 2001 Archived 2007 09 29 at the Wayback Machine Jurassic Genius David Wilson Offbeat Museum Curator Wins Prestigious Genius Grant Archived 2018 04 04 at the Wayback Machine NPR October 27 2001 A cabinet of wonder A Los Angeles museum filled with curio and mystery Archived 2014 05 05 at the Wayback Machine The Economist September 10 2009 Weschler Lawrence 1995 Mr Wilson s Cabinet of Wonder Pronged Ants Horned Humans Mice on Toast And Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology New York Random House Perrottet Tony The Museum of Jurassic Technology Smithsonian Archived from the original on 2018 09 28 Retrieved 2018 09 27 Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum Hagen Archived 2018 04 04 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 4 April 2018 a b Jones Oliver 2015 08 04 An Afternoon in The Museum of Jurassic Technology The Strangest Museum in America The Daily Beast Archived from the original on 2023 04 30 Retrieved 2023 04 30 Blitz Matt Inside Los Angeles s Strangest Museum Smithsonian Magazine Archived from the original on 2022 12 27 Retrieved 2023 04 30 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Museum of Jurassic Technology Official website Roadtrip America A Separate Reality NPR Archives Jurassic Genius David Wilson Jeanne Scheper Interview with David Wilson Other Voices vol 3 no 1 Mark Edward s Skeptiblog A Museum that makes you think 201034 01 33 N 118 23 42 W 34 02586 N 118 3950 W 34 02586 118 3950 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Museum of Jurassic Technology amp oldid 1194154892, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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