From curiosity to crisis: MJT’s ongoing recovery

Situated in Los Angeles’ Culver City neighborhood, the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) is one of the city’s more eccentric cultural institutions. Earlier this month, the museum’s structural integrity was threatened when a nighttime fire caused extensive damage to the property. Reported late on July 8, the conflagration destroyed the building’s gift shop and caused significant smoke damage throughout multiple exhibits. With a projected $75,000 in lost revenue during the museum’s closure, it is hoped that the MJT can open its doors again sometime next month.

What MJT Lacks in Scholarly Validity, It More Than Makes Up For in Eccentric Charm

Despite its quirky moniker, the Museum of Jurassic Technology has very little to do with the Lower Jurassic period. Nor does it represent any sort of geological or paleontological scholarly validity. The LA institution has long thrived on confounding museum-goers, often straddling the fine line between well-researched historical exploration and inexplicable eccentricity.

Founded in 1988 by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson, the MJT is a peculiar homage to the Renaissance cabinets of curiosity (also known as wunderkammers) that served as a sort of proto-museum in those earlier centuries. Aesthetically inspired by these curiosity cabinets, over time, the MJT has earned a reputation for blending fiction and reality, along with a rather idiosyncratic and non-linear approach to storytelling.

On the one hand, many of the museum’s exhibits feature verifiable historical artifacts and reference real and accurately researched figures and moments. Permanently on display are a room dedicated to the exhaustive and encyclopedic interests of Athanasius Kircher, the 17th-century polymath and Jesuit priest. Another feature is the ultra-miniature sculptures of Armenian artist Hagop Sandaldjian. A third is devoted to the “perfectly useless” schematics of various imaginary mechanisms. Some of these miniatures are so small that they are contained inside the eye of a needle. Sandaldjian also created his sculptures by carving a single human hair.

Other “documents” of discovery housed at the MJT are either fabricated or far harder to decipher. Take, for example, one display of decomposing dice that purportedly once belonged to magician Ricky Jay. Then there’s the visual tribute to Los Angeles-area trailer parks known as “The Garden of Eden on Wheels.” Many of the museum’s exhibits are scientifically obsessed and blithely hallucinogenic: There are stereographic radiographs of flowers, microscopic mosaics of butterfly wing scales, and a room crammed with undeliverable letters sent by amateur astronomers to the Mount Wilson Observatory between 1915 and 1935. Since 2005, a Russian tea room has formed part of the permanent collection, replicating Tsar Nicholas II’s study in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

In 2010, even David Bowie contributed to the museum. The singer donated various objects of personal importance to him as part of the MJT’s “Time Capsule” collection, which also included materials from writer Jonathan Lethem and director Robert Wilson.

MJT Fire Response and Recovery

A report written by Lawrence Weschler and published by The Believer went into some detail about the origins and subsequent response to the fire. The author, who also published the book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder in 1996—investigating some of MJT’s many alleged items and curiosities—said that museum founder David Wilson first noticed the fire. The founder lives in a residence located directly behind the museum. On realizing there was a fire at the museum, Wilson took two fire extinguishers from his home and ran towards the museum.

He saw “a ferocious column of flame issuing from the corner wall which faces the street,” according to Weschler. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire extinguishers that Wilson had weren’t sufficient to contain the flames. Happily, the museum founder’s daughter and son-in-law showed up moments later with a larger extinguisher. They were able to put the fire out before firefighters on the scene, who Wilson was told would have likely lost the entire building had they arrived one minute later.

The fire, while mostly limited to the gift shop, caused smoke to spread throughout the building. Smoke had also infiltrated many of the exhibits. “We have had, in essence, a thin creamy brown liquid poured evenly over all the surfaces—the walls, the vitrines, the ceiling, the carpets, and eyepieces, everything,” Wilson later said.

MJT is Slowly Returning to Normal After Fire Damage

Cleaning and repairing the damage from the fire has reportedly been slow and laborious, especially due to the museum’s smoke infiltration. The MJT’s staff and volunteers have been working tirelessly to recover from the damage, which may take several weeks to fully resolve. In the meantime, Weschler has been calling for donations to be made to the museum’s general fund to help replace lost revenues and repair damage caused by the fire. He added that MJT is “one of the most truly sublime institutions in the country,” if also one of the most elusive. The MJT, he said, simply couldn’t be more “outside normal lines of what constitutes science, art, fact, fiction, and straightforward narrative.”

The museum currently does not have a projected reopening date, but has assured followers that it will be opening its doors once more—warts, and smoke, and all.