William Drenttel, "David Wilson & The Museum of Jurassic Technology."
I.D., 44:1 (January/February 1997) 78.


Today's museums are bustling cultural centers where the experience is a controlled interaction between crowds and content. The line between "exhibition" and "gift shop" may have grown thin, but the net result has brought thousands of new viewers into our museums and millions of new dollars into the coffers of our local economies. What is clear is that the mystery of art, the quietude of a gallery, the sense of entering another world has often been sacrificed in the process.

These qualities are still found in a few museums in America, and one of them is buried among the desolate storefronts on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. Founded ten years ago by David Wilson, The Museum of Jurassic Technology merges natural history, technology and weird science into perplexing and provocative exhibitions. Truth or fiction? Real or virtual? First-time (even second-time) visitors to the museum may have trouble telling the difference. Despite its humble scale and slightly handmade appearance, MJT has received significant media attention, and is a darling of the museum community (with friends across the curatorial spectrum, from the Getty in Los Angeles to the New Museum in New York).

But leave all this attention behind. MJT succeeds because its provocative storytelling leaves viewers with a sense of wonder. For example, an exhibition of letters written to the Mount Wilson Observatory between 1915-35 captures the awe and fear that characterized the early twentieth-century discovery of Pluto and beyond. MJT is not afraid to attempt complex exhibitions: there is a room dedicated to the opera singer, Madelena Delani, who died immediately following a performance at the Iguassu Falls in Uruguay; this room is next to a diorama about the German engineer Wilhelm Sonnabend's unsuccessful quest to span this same waterfall with the world's longest suspension bridge. A more recent exhibition offers a quirky commentary on contemporary culture and technology: the micro-miniature sculptures by Hagop Sandaldjian of Goofy, Little Red Riding Hood, and Napoleon must be viewed under 25-power magnification, a virtual "the eye of the needle" experience bridging Hollywood and Silicon Valley. In the end, there is enough "truth" in these exhibitions for the viewer to make a leap past all the ambiguity into engagement and enjoyment.

This is more storytelling than exhibition-making, and yet the earnestness of the presentation suggests a totally designed experience. Often, typical museum exhibitions are curated between the parallel pressures of appeal and correctness: the lively experience can be fun, much like going to the movies or browsing in a mall. But all this is very far from the early idea of the museum as, in Wilson's words, "a place where man's mind could attain a mood of aloofness above everyday affairs." That MJT and Wilson achieve such moods in reality is a refreshing reminder that the world is still filled with little surprises and vast mysteries.

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