inter museum relations

The thing I love about my job, which is one among many, is that I get the opportunity to see some exhibits before a lot of other people can. I can attend gallery talks and be one of 25 people who get to listen to a curator or artist talk about their or their mentor's art work.

I did get the chance to see the new Dino Hall exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles the evening before it opened to the public. Some inter museum relations a la Dino Dance Party. I am not much of a dancer (the psychic even agreed) and luckily the rest of the museum was open, so while everyone was shaking their tail feather I got to wander around and see the exhibits almost completely alone. Which is my version of heaven.

I hadn't been to this museum before and probably wouldn't have searched it out since I like museums of a more art based kind. That is really too bad because I would have totally missed out on the fabulous dioramas of African and North American Mammals, which are very much like art pieces, but features real, but long since deceased animals of far off or not so far of lands. (The white tailed deer, black bear and otter made me homesick)

This was before PETA and in the early 1900's where people would think:

"I would really like that in my museum"

BANG BANG!!

"Now this animal is in my museum"

(Which I would like to mention is conjecture by me)

What I was most impressed by was the production value of each diorama. The shadows of the sands of the Sahara Desert, hoof prints in sand (I can imagine them dancing stiff animals around to do that), ice bergs that look 3 dimensional and floating, darkness, light, chimps picking bugs out of their loved ones hair. Watching a giraffe drink, hilarious.

Plus there is always the Honey Badger, I was looking at him and he doesn't scare, because you know he don't give a fuck.

If you want to see how they create each diorama they have a youtube channel you can access through their website, which I have already linked to above. It really is an amazing process and maybe some of them aren't as old as you think they are.

I thought this installation was a bit funny, which is called something like the animals of backyard LA. My camera couldn't capture all of it, but what is in this diorama is a coyote with a dead house cat in its mouth, a swimming pool, a house mouse, one of those wild parrots and the LA skyline. My picture is a bit blurry, but consider the blurriness to be a little bit o' smog

Admission is $12 for adults.