A hair’s breadth from disaster at the Museum of Jurassic Technology

Los Angeles’ beloved Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) has suffered major damage in a nighttime fire that took place earlier this month. In a post from the museum’s official blog, it was revealed that the fire—which broke out late in the evening on July 8—destroyed the MJT’s gift shop and caused smoke damage to various areas of the museum. With the museum still closed and recovery efforts ongoing, projected revenue losses are at $75,000 and could take until next month to reopen.

The MJT has been an LA cultural oddity for decades.

Situated in Culver City, the MJT has been a cultural curiosity in LA since opening in 1988. Founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson, the museum has a reputation as a bit off-the-wall and has gained cult status among fans of its peculiar, if sometimes dubious, collection of exhibits. On its website, the museum bills itself as “dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic,” yet curiously has little to do with the actual Lower Jurassic period. The concept of the MJT was inspired by something much older: Renaissance-era collections of curiosities known as wunderkammers.

Displaying both genuine historical artifacts and concocted historical artifacts in a style described as historical pastiche, the museum is known for its layered and sometimes challenging narrative approach. The museum’s exhibits can be tough to decipher, and many of its visitors leave not knowing what was “real” and what wasn’t. A permanent exhibition in the MJT, for example, “honors the memory” of Athanasius Kircher, a real-life 17th-century German polymath and Jesuit priest who was an enthusiast of all things natural and man-made. A gallery dedicated to the work of Hagop Sandaldjian, a real-life Armenian artist, features ultra-miniature sculptures displayed inside the eye of a needle and carved from a single human hair.

A typical day at the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) before the fire

Elsewhere in the museum, visitors will find decomposing dice belonging to magician Ricky Jay in a disintegrating display case, a visual survey of LA-area trailer parks titled “The Garden of Eden on Wheels,” stereographic radiographs of flowers, microscopic mosaics created from butterfly wing scales, and an absurd collection of letters written by amateur astronomers to the Mount Wilson Observatory between the years 1915 and 1935. The museum even has a Russian tea room that has been in operation since 2005. Modeled after Tsar Nicholas II’s study in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the tea room serves caviar, tea, champagne, and vodka.

The history of the fire

Writer Lawrence Weschler, who chronicled the museum in the 1996 book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, was contacted by David Wilson to provide an account of the fire. Wilson, who lives in a home behind the museum, was the one who discovered the blaze. The pair found the fire about 9 p.m., with Wilson driving to the museum with two fire extinguishers in hand. “There was a ferocious column of flame,” Wilson later recounted, describing the scene where the fire was scaling the corner of the building that faces the street.

The two fire extinguishers were not powerful enough to contain the blaze. Thankfully, Wilson’s daughter and son-in-law soon arrived with a larger extinguisher and managed to get the fire under control by the time firefighters had arrived on the scene. The firefighters later informed Wilson that the whole building would have burned down if they had arrived just a minute later.

Smoke damage was widespread.

Although the gift shop was reduced to a charred ruin, smoke also made its way throughout the museum. Wilson described the damage as if “a thin creamy brown liquid” had been “evenly poured over all the surfaces—the walls, the vitrines, the ceiling, the carpets, and eyepieces, everything.” The process of cleaning and restoring these areas of the museum has been ongoing and is described as time-consuming and arduous.

Staff and volunteers have been working around the clock to get the museum to a presentable state, a process that Weschler has stated will take some time. In the meantime, he has requested that visitors and supporters of the museum donate to the general fund in order to provide some relief to the losses incurred by the museum.

Faced with what Weschler described as an “existential threat,” the MJT is currently in need of all the support it can get. Weschler is adamant that the MJT is “one of the most truly sublime institutions in the country” and that it provides a vital cultural service to the people of Los Angeles and beyond. The museum, Weschler continues, has carved out an “impossible nook for itself just outside the received categories of science, art, and narrative.”

The museum’s status and future

The museum is still closed at the time of publication, and no official word has been given about the status of the permanent exhibits. There is confidence, however, that the museum will reopen in some capacity as its subversive take on scholarly documentation and high-concept satire will not be easily thwarted.

About the author: Colin Dabkowski is a staff writer at NOMADIC FILMS. Colin earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in 2018. He has written for numerous publications on art, music, travel, film, technology, and science. In his free time, he enjoys watching the right kind of movies and traveling to places that require a passport.