Where curiosity burned: Fire strikes LA’s MJT.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology, one of Los Angeles’s most offbeat cultural institutions, has suffered major damage as a result of a fire that occurred in the building over the weekend. Although the fire, which started late on July 8, was localized to the MJT’s gift shop, smoke damage spread to other parts of the facility and has kept it closed since.

The loss of revenue in the meantime has been estimated to be around $75,000, with a tentative plan to reopen next month. The MJT, which is in Culver City, has been a fixture of LA’s cultural scene for decades. It was founded in 1988 by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson, and has since been run by Wilson alone.

The museum has often been criticized as deliberately misleading, and sometimes falls into the territory of genuine fraud. That hasn’t stopped it, however, from having a loyal following for its head-scratching exhibits that tend to blur the lines between fact and fiction. The museum calls itself “dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic,” and some of its exhibits reference the Lower Jurassic period. The Jurassic aspect of the museum, however, is largely a front—its real interest is in acting as a modern take on the wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosity, a tradition that traces back to the Renaissance.

The museum’s wunderkammer style has also given it a unique take on storytelling. The MJT does feature many genuine historical pieces, but there are other exhibits which incorporate a mix of fact and fiction, so well blended that some visitors leave without understanding what was real and what was not. A permanent exhibit at the museum is dedicated to Athanasius Kircher, a genuine 17th-century polymath and Jesuit priest who attempted to make a name for himself in many fields of knowledge. Other exhibits have featured the hyper-miniature sculptures of Armenian artist Hagop Sandaldjian, which are so small that they are displayed in the eye of a needle and are sculpted from a single human hair.

Some of the museum’s exhibits are even more intentionally out there. There is a room full of decomposing dice that belonged to magician Ricky Jay. There is also a visual essay about trailer parks in the Los Angeles area called “The Garden of Eden on Wheels.” The museum also features stereographic radiographs of flowers, microscopic mosaics made from butterfly wing scales, and a cabinet filled with letters from amateur astronomers to the Mount Wilson Observatory between the years 1915 and 1935. Since 2005, it has also featured a Russian tea room “modeled on Tsar Nicholas II’s study in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.”

Fire and Response

Writer Lawrence Weschler, author of the 1996 book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, which seeks to understand the origins of some of the MJT’s displays, wrote a detailed account of the weekend fire in the museum. In his account, he writes that the fire was noticed by David Wilson, who lives in a residence located behind the MJT. Noticing the flames from the building, he ran outside with two fire extinguishers. “A ferocious column of flame,” as Wilson later described the scene, was climbing up the corner wall that faces the street.

The extinguishers that Wilson had, however, were insufficient to contain the blaze. Wilson’s daughter and son-in-law arrived shortly thereafter, however, with a larger extinguisher, and were able to put the fire out just before firefighters arrived at the scene. Firefighters later told Wilson that if they had arrived a minute later, the entire building would likely have gone up in flames.

Structurally, the fire only caused major damage to the gift shop, but smoke damage spread to other parts of the facility. Wilson described the smoke damage to the building as similar to “a thin creamy brown liquid … evenly poured over all the surfaces—the walls, the vitrines, the ceiling, the carpets, and eyepieces, everything.” Smoke damage of that sort can be especially problematic for a facility that prides itself on its presentation. The museum staff and volunteers have been working to clean and repair the damage, but the process is described as slow and arduous.

Weschler, for his part, has encouraged those who support the museum to donate to its general fund to help offset the damage and help with repairs. “The Museum of Jurassic Technology is one of the most truly sublime institutions in the country,” Weschler wrote. “It’s an institution like no other, not quite a science museum, not quite an art museum, not quite a natural history museum, not quite an archeological museum, not quite a speculative lab, not quite a marvel emporium, not quite a hoax factory, not quite a wonder shrine, not quite a poetry workshop, and not quite a library.”

The museum does not yet have a confirmed reopening date, but remains confident that it will return to its strange state of satire, scholarship, and surrealism in full force.