Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
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| Location | Exposition Park Los Angeles, California |
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| Type | Natural history museum |
| Visitors | about 1 million annually |
| DirectorTemplate:Pluralize from text | Lori Bettison-Varga[1] |
Public transit access |   Expo Park/USC, Expo/Vermont |
| Website | nhm |
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| <div style="width:100%; text-align:center; line-height:1.5;color: var(--color-base); background:Script error: No such module "Designation".;">U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
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| Location | 900 Exposition Blvd Los Angeles, California |
| Area | Template:Cvt |
| Built | 1913 |
| Architect | Hudson & Munsell |
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| NRHP reference No. | 75000434[2] |
| Added to NRHP | March 4, 1975 |
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The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is a museum located in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, next to the California Science Center. It is the largest natural and historical museum in the Western United States,[3] with a collection of nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts covering 4.5 billion years of history. This large collection consists of not only specimens for exhibition but also vast research collections housed on and offsite.
The museum is associated with one other museum in Greater Los Angeles: the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park. The two museums work together to achieve their common mission: "to inspire wonder, discovery, and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds".[4]
History
NHM opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, in 1913 as The Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building with fitted marble walls and domed and colonnaded rotunda, is on The National Register of Historic Places. Additional wings opened in 1925, 1930, 1960, and 1976.
The museum split in 1961 into The Los Angeles County Museum of History and Science and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). LACMA moved to a new location on Wilshire Boulevard in 1965, and the Museum of History and Science was renamed The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Eventually, the museum renamed itself again to The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
In 2003, the museum began a campaign to transform its exhibits and visitor experience. The museum reopened its seismically retrofitted renovated 1913 rotunda, along with the new "Age of Mammals" exhibition[7] in 2010. Its Dinosaur Hall opened in July 2011. A new Los Angeles history exhibition, "Becoming Los Angeles", opened in 2013. The outdoor Nature Gardens and Nature Lab, which explore L.A. wildlife, also opened in 2013.
In 2024 the museum opened a new wing of the museum called the NHM Commons.[8] The commons is 75,000 square feet (7,000 m2) and includes Gnatalie, a green-boned sauropod that's over 75 ft long; it is located on the southwest side of the museum. The commons aims to be a community space with a combination of indoor and outdoor experiences including a welcome area, a lobby with a shop, a theater, a café, and a plaza.[9]
Research and collections
The museum maintains research and collections in the following fields:
- Annelida
- Anthropology and Archaeology
- Crustacea
- Echinoderms
- Entomology
- Ethnology
- Herpetology
- History
- Ichthyology
- Invertebrate paleontology
- Malacology
- Mammalogy
- Mineralogy
- Ornithology
- Vertebrate paleontology
The museum has three floors of permanent exhibits. Among the most popular museum displays are those devoted to animal habitats, dinosaurs, pre-Columbian cultures, The Ralph M. Parsons Discovery Center and Insect Zoo, and the new Nature Lab, which explores urban wildlife in Southern California.
The museum's collections are strong in many fields, but the mineralogy and Pleistocene paleontology are the most esteemed, the latter thanks to the wealth of specimens collected from The La Brea Tar Pits.
The museum has almost 30 million specimens representing marine zoology. These include one of the largest collections of marine mammal remains in the world, housed in a warehouse off site, which at over 5,000 specimens is second in size only to that of The Smithsonian.[10]
The museum's collection of historical documents is held in The Seaver Center for Western History Research.[11]
Special exhibits
The museum hosts regular special exhibitions which augment its collections and advance its mission. Recent special exhibits have included Mummies and Pterosaurs, both in 2016. The museum has also recently hosted exhibits that incorporate pop culture, such as an exhibit promoting House of the Dragon in 2022.[12] There have also been Los Angeles themed special exhibits such as a Becoming Los Angeles that showcases Los Angeles history through the years, divided up into before 1929 and after 1929.[13] Another example would be the current exhibit titled L.A. Underwater which exhibits almost 40 fossils from the prehistoric time, when the land where L.A. now is, was underwater.[14]
The museum also hosts a butterfly pavilion outside every spring and summer and a spider pavilion on the same site in the fall.[15][16]
Since 2017, the museum has hosted a special exhibit about P-22, the mountain lion that lived in nearby Griffith Park.[17][18][19]
Architecture
Over the years, the museum has built additions onto its original building. Originally dedicated when The Natural History Museum opened in 1913, the rotunda is one of the museum's most elegant and popular spaces. Lined with marble columns and crowned by a stained glass dome, the room is also the home of the very first piece of public art funded by Los Angeles County, a Beaux-Arts statue by Julia Bracken Wendt entitled Three Muses, or History, Science and Art.[20]
Film and television
- In 1996, Sheryl Crow filmed her "If It Makes You Happy" music video in the museum's Endangered Species Hall.[21]
- Honda filmed its "Matthew Broderick's Day Off" commercial at the museum.[22]
- The twenty-seventh season of The Bachelor was shot one of the dates inside the museum.[23]
- In 2025, Machine Gun Kelly filmed his music video for his song "vampire diaries" at the museum.
Gallery
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Old east door of The Natural History Museum in 1956 -
Hall of African Mammals -
Triceratops mount in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County -
Museum rotunda -
Dinosaur statues along the road leading to the museum
References
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- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Boehm, Mike (July 8, 2015). "Lori Bettison-Varga named new president of L.A. County's Natural History Museum". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Natural History Museum". United States Department of the Interior – National Park Service. March 4, 1975.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Libraries & Museums". County of Los Angeles. Archived from the original on June 29, 2016. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Mission". Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Archived from the original on September 8, 2009.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Wakim, Marielle (May 15, 2018). "Fascinating Objects Tell the Story of L.A. in This Revamped Exhibit". Los Angeles. Retrieved March 16, 2022.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Antonio de Coronel". Archived from the original on September 9, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Muchnic, Suzanne (July 4, 2010). "'Age of Mammals' at The Natural History Museum". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."NHM Commons Opening Day Celebration & Block Party | Natural History Museum". nhm.org. Retrieved September 26, 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."NHM Commons | Natural History Museum". nhm.org. Retrieved September 26, 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Fessenden, Marissa (July 20, 2015). "In L.A. There's a Warehouse Filled with Whale Bones". Smithsonian.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."About the Seaver Center". Natural History Museum Los Angeles County. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."House of the Dragon:The Targaryen Dynasty | Natural History Museum". nhm.org. August 5, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2023.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Becoming Los Angeles". Natural History Museum. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."L.A. Underwater". Natural History Museum. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Butterfly Pavilion". Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Spider Pavilion". Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."P-22: The story of L.A.'s most famous feline". Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."'LA's most famous feline,' P-22, gets a special exhibit at the Natural History Museum". KPCC 89.3 FM. July 20, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Elston, Christina (July 21, 2017). "P-22 Shows His Stuff at the Natural History Museum". L.A. Parent.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer (1990). American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions. Boston: G. K. Hall. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-8161-8732-4.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."#DioramaChallenge | Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County". nhmlac.org. Retrieved September 28, 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."#DioramaChallenge | Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County". nhmlac.org. Retrieved September 28, 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Cascone, Sarah (February 8, 2023). "'The Bachelor' Sent a Couple on a Romantic Sleepover at a Natural History Museum, Where They Had a Candlelit Dinner Under Dinosaur Bones". Artnet. Retrieved September 20, 2025.
External links
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- Official website
- William S. Hart Ranch and Museum
- George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits
- Review of the Museum's new Dinosaur Hall at The New York Times, July 19, 2011; Slide show of exhibit
- Digitized materials from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County at California Revealed
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