Museum of Jurassic Technology
Encyclopedia
The Museum of Jurassic Technology is an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the lower jurassic. Located at 9341 Venice Boulevard in the Palms
district of Los Angeles, California
, the Museum holds a specialized repository of relics and artifacts evoking some of the more obscure and poetic aspects of natural history, the history of technology and science, and their entwined realizations in human artistry and ingenuity. It was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson
and Diana Drake Wilson (husband and wife) in 1987.
, which describes in detail many of its exhibits.
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 Museum of Jurassic Technology's 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 varieties of paths to knowledge. The Museum attracts approximately 18,000 visitors per year.
Over the years, the Museum has expanded both in terms of its exhibitions as well as other public offerings. In 2005, the Museum opened its Tula Tea Room, a Russian-style tea room where Georgian tea, cookies, and crackers are served to patrons. This room is a miniature reconstruction of the study of Tsar Nicolas II from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Borzoi Kabinet Theater screens a series of poetic documentaries produced by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in collaboration with St. Petersburg-based arts and science collective, Kabinet. The series of films entitled A Chain of Flowers draws its name from the quote 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, Obshee Delo: The Common Task, and Bol'shoe Sovietskaia Zatmenie: The Great Soviet Eclipse.
The Museum's founder David Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2001.
Many of these books are published in conjunction with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information.
From 1992 to 2006, the Museum of Jurassic Technology's Foundation Collection was on display in their 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 then-director Michael Fehr.
Palms, Los Angeles, California
Palms is a community founded in 1886 in West Los Angeles, California, and was the oldest neighborhood annexed to the city of Los Angeles, in 1915. The 1886 tract was marketed as an agricultural and vacation community...
district of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, the Museum holds a specialized repository of relics and artifacts evoking some of the more obscure and poetic aspects of natural history, the history of technology and science, and their entwined realizations in human artistry and ingenuity. It was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson
David Hildebrand Wilson
David Hildebrand Wilson is the co-founder of the Museum of Jurassic Technology along with his wife, Diana Wilson. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. He received an MFA in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts in 1976. He and his museum are the subject of...
and Diana Drake Wilson (husband and wife) in 1987.
Overview
The Museum of Jurassic Technology traces its inspiration to the earliest days of the institution of the museum, which it dates back to Noah's Ark, the first and most complete Museum of Natural History known to man. The Museum's catalog includes a mixture of artistic, scientific as well as some unclassifiable exhibits, and evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 18th century predecessors of modern natural history museums. The factual claims of many of the Museum's exhibits strain credibility, provoking a rich array of interpretations from commentators. The Museum was the subject of a book by Lawrence Weschler in 1995 entitled Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, And Other Marvels of Jurassic TechnologyMr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology is a book by Lawrence Weschler primarily about The Museum of Jurassic Technology and more broadly, the history and role of museums....
, which describes in detail many of its exhibits.
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 Museum of Jurassic Technology's 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 varieties of paths to knowledge. The Museum attracts approximately 18,000 visitors per year.
Over the years, the Museum has expanded both in terms of its exhibitions as well as other public offerings. In 2005, the Museum opened its Tula Tea Room, a Russian-style tea room where Georgian tea, cookies, and crackers are served to patrons. This room is a miniature reconstruction of the study of Tsar Nicolas II from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Borzoi Kabinet Theater screens a series of poetic documentaries produced by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in collaboration with St. Petersburg-based arts and science collective, Kabinet. The series of films entitled A Chain of Flowers draws its name from the quote by Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as establishing one of the first museums....
: 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, Obshee Delo: The Common Task, and Bol'shoe Sovietskaia Zatmenie: The Great Soviet Eclipse.
The Museum's founder David Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2001.
Publications
The Museum also produces a series of leaflets and books about museum exhibits including:- On the Foundation of the Museum The Thums Gardeners & Botanists
- The Eye of the Needle: The Unique World of Microminiatures of Hagop SandaldjianHagop SandaldjianHagop Sandaldjian was an Egyptian-born Armenian American musician and microminiature sculptor, best known for his tiny art pieces displayed at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, California...
, with an essay by Ralph Rugoff - Geoffrey Sonnabend: Obliscence: Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter
- Bernard Maston, Donald R. Griffith and the Deprong Mori of the Tripsicum Plateau,
- Garden of Eden on Wheels: Selected Collections from Los Angeles Area Mobile Home and Trailer Parks
- No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mt. Wilson Observatory, 1915-1935
- Das Museum Kircherianum: Die Welt besteht aus geheimen Verknüpfungen
- Napoleona
- The Museum of Jurassic Technology: Jubilee Catalog: Primi Decem Anni
Many of these books are published in conjunction with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information.
Exhibitions
The Museum maintains over 30 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 3-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 Sandaljian : A collection of micro-miniature sculptures, each carved from a single human hair and placed within the eye of a needle. Currently on display: GoofyGoofyGoofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
, Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul IIBlessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
and Napoleon INapoleon INapoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
. Other microminiatures include violinsViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, dancers, a crucifixCrucifixA crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
(made of a single strand of the artist's hair and gold); characters like Donald DuckDonald DuckDonald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
, PinocchioPinocchioThe Adventures of Pinocchio is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi, written in Florence. The first half was originally a serial between 1881 and 1883, and then later completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio , an...
, Snow White and the Seven DwarfsSnow White"Snow White" is a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm...
; a self-portrait; a golf playerGolfGolf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
and a baseball playerBaseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
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 JayRicky JayRichard Jay Potash , better known by the stage name Ricky Jay, is an American stage magician, actor, and writer. He is a sleight-of-hand expert and is notable for his card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and stage patter.-Life and career:...
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 ObservatoryMount Wilson ObservatoryThe Mount Wilson Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a 5,715 foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles...
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 17th century Jesuit polymath who was the founder of the Museum Kircherianum 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 of Jurassic Technology's Foundation Collection was on display in their Tochtermuseum at the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum
Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum
The Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum is an art museum in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The center of the museum is a building whose interior was designed by Henry van de Velde to house Karl Ernst Osthaus' art collection, open to the public as the Folkwang 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 then-director Michael Fehr.
External links
- Museum website
- Public Events at the Museum
- Roadtrip America: A Separate Reality
- NPR Archives: Macarthur Genius Grant for Museum of Jurassic Technology (Ed Heil)
- Corporeal Reality radio interview with David Wilson and author Aimee Bender, 2006
- Jeanne Scheper, Interview with David Wilson, Other VoicesOther Voices (open-access journal of cultural criticism)Other Voices is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal of cultural criticism and cultural studies founded in 1996 at the University of Pennsylvania. Other Voices publishes interdisciplinary essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, lecture transcriptions, audio and video lectures,...
, vol. 3, no. 1 - Mark Edward's Skeptiblog "A Museum that makes you think" 2010