Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

By Patrick Totty

Los Angeles County, now at 10 million people, has pushed its way over the past 20 years into the front rank of cities that boast world-class museums. The new Getty Center in West Los Angeles, construction of MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) downtown and the recent expansion of the Los Angeles County Art Museum all reaffirmed LA’s arrival as an important cultural center. 

But somewhat lost in the hoopla over these newer venues was the county’s substantial ensemble of other important museums: San Marino’s Huntington Library. Malibu’s Getty Museum, Pasadena’s Norton Simon, Highland Park’s Southwest Museum of the American Indian, Griffith Park’s Museum of the American West and Exposition Park’s Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 

The Natural History Museum, whose only real rival in California is the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (now closed until 2006 for construction of a new facility), suffers a bit from its location. That’s not to say that Exposition Park is a terrible site – it isn’t. The problem is the park’s surfeit of attractions: Located across Exposition Blvd. from the University of Southern California, and easily accessed by the nearby Harbor Freeway, Exposition Park houses not only to the museum but also the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, the California Science Center, the California African-American Museum, a swimming stadium and a renowned rose garden. 

Sometimes a museum can get lost in the shuffle.  

But for people willing to ignore Exposition Park’s other distractions, the Natural History Museum is one of the finest ways to spend an afternoon – especially with children or students – in all of Los Angeles County. 

Founded in 1913, the museum now protects more than 33 million artifacts and specimens, including extensive collections of dinosaur fossils and Native American baskets, pottery and jewelry. One of the first things visitors see when they enter the  building is the museum’s signature exhibit, “Dueling Dinosaurs,” the fossil skeletons of a Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex locked in deadly battle – one creature for its very life, the other for its next meal.

Another of the museum’s famous exhibits is a 70-foot-long whale skeleton. But this venue does tiny as well as stupendous: its Insect Zoo, an adjunct to the kid-pleasing Discovery Center, is the largest in the western U.S. The museum also features classic dioramas of African and North American mammals and California marine life, a Hall of Birds that features 500 species, a huge gem and mineral collection (including a walk-through vault containing precious colored gemstones) and a hall devoted to California history. 

This is a classic jack-of-all-trades museum that, while hewing to the general topic of “natural history,” manages to span many topics and disciplines.  It’s like a department store for the mind, and its sheer variety makes it catnip for kids (and for adults who still have a bit of the old “Well, I’ll be!” left in them). 

If you can’t make it to Chicago, New York or Washington, DC, this is the best natural history museum in the U.S. For any anybody, local or visitor, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is one more bit of gilt on an already abundantly gilded cultural scene. 

The museum’s web site is very informative and gives plenty of information about Exposition Park’s other attractions:  http://www.nhm.org/