Museum of Jurassic Technology
From Free net encyclopedia
The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a museum located at 9341 Venice Boulevard, in the Palms district of Los Angeles. It has a Culver City, California address and zip code (90232). 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.
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Overview
Image:Popeneedle.jpg Image:Butterfly.flowers.jpg
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 exhibits that evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 18th century predecessors of modern natural history museums. The museum was the subject of a book by Lawrence Weschler in 1995 entitled Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, and the museum's founder David Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation grant 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; this film is available on DVD in the museum's gift shop.
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder portrays the museum, and David Wilson's role as curator, as a work of conceptual art. The exhibits are shown to be riddled with factual errors and peculiar attributions. However, many of the exhibits that, initially, seem to Mr. Weschler to be entirely fabricated turn out to have a factual basis. He sees the museum as a commentary on the authoritarian character of most public museums and upon the trust that patrons place in those authorities. But also, the museum itself is a reminder of the turn of the 20th century, when increased world travel and rapid scientific progress resulted in artifacts that blurred the boundaries between what was considered possible and impossible.
The museum maintains a number of permanent exhibits including:
- An exhibit on household myths of years past (for example, if a child holds a dying creature in his or her hands, that person will develop a tremor in their hands as an adult).
- A collection devoted to trailer park culture, entitled "Garden of Eden On Wheels".
- 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.
- Microscopic collages depicting flowers and other objects, made entirely from individual butterfly wing scales.
- A collection of stereographic photographs.
- A small room dedicated to unusual letters and theories received by the Mount Wilson Observatory circa 1915-1935.
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
- The museum is located next door to The Center for Land Use Interpretation.
See also
External links
- Museum website
- Roadtrip America: A Separate Reality
- NPR Archives: Macarthur Genius Grant for Museum of Jurassic Technology (Ed Heil)
- Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum
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.