The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a museum located at 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, California, near the Palms district of Los Angeles. It was founded by David and Diana Wilson in 1989. A small branch of the museum is located inside the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany.
Overview
The museum claims to have a "specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities." This explains the museum's name and also suggests its puzzling nature, since the Lower Jurassic ended over 150 million years before the appearance of hominoids and in particular before anything that could be called technology. See geologic time scale.
Its catalog includes a mixture of artistic, scientific and bizarrely unclassifiable exhibits that evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 18th century predecessors of modern natural history museums. The factual claims of many of the museums exhibits strain credibility, provoking a rich array of interpretations from commentators and much critical praise; the museum was the subject of a book by Lawrence Weschler in 1995, and the museum's founder David Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation "Genius award" in 2003. The museum claims to attract around 6,000 visitors per year. In 2004, a 35-minute documentary about the museum was produced entitled Inhaling the Spore.
The museum maintains a number of permanent exhibits including:
- An exhibit on household myths of years past (for example, if a person holds a dying creature in his or her hands, that person will develop a tremor in those hands).
- A collection devoted to trailer park culture.
- A collection of micro-miniature sculptures and paintings, such as a sculpture of Pope John Paul II carved from a single human hair and placed within the eye of a needle.
- A collection of stereographic photographs.
- A small room dedicated to unusual letters and theories received by the Mount Wilson Observatory.
The museum giftshop sells booklets devoted to all these exhibits.
In 2005, the museum was expanded with the addition of a tea room and a small theater for presenting special video productions.
Quotations
- "...The public museum as understood today, is a collection of specimens and other objects of interest to the scholar, the man of science as well as the more casual visitor, arranged and displayed in accordance with the scientific method. 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.' " —Museum of Jurassic Technology, Introduction & Background, p.2
- "Confusion can be a very creative state of mind; in fact, confusion can act as a vehicle to open people's minds. The hard shell of certainty can be shattered..".— David Wilson in an interview with author Lawrence Weschler, originally aired on NPR, October 27, 2001.
Trivia
- In the early days of its operation, founder David Wilson used to stand on the sidewalk outside playing an accordion in order to attract visitors.
- The museum is located next door to The Center for Land Use Interpretation.
See also
External links
References
See also: Weschler, Lawrence (1995) "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder", ISBN 0679764895 - "Mr. Wilson" is David Wilson, the founder and Director of the Museum.