One of the quirkier cultural gems in Los Angeles is the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT), featuring an eclectic collection of exhibits (of varying authenticity) inspired by historical Renaissance "cabinets of curiosities" (wunderkammers). It hasn't been broadly reported, but earlier this month, a fire broke out late at night, gutting the museum's gift shop and inflicting smoke damage on several exhibits, with lost revenues estimated to be around $75,000 until the doors reopen sometime next month.
The museum was founded in 1988 by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson, "dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic." The collections don't actually have much to do with that geologic epoch, channeling instead the private natural history collections that became common in the 16th century and the later emergence of public museums in the 19th century. Since 2005 there has also been a Russian tea room, a mini-reconstruction of Tsar Nicholas II's study at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.
There are more than 30 permanent exhibits, including one devoted to the life and exploits of the German polymath and Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher. There is also an exhibit called "The Garden of Eden on Wheels," about LA-area trailer parks; another celebrating the micro-miniature sculptures of Hagop Sandaldjian, carved from a single hair and displayed in the eye of a needle; a collection of stereographic radiographs of flowers; a collection of decomposing antique dice once owned by magician Ricky Jay; 19th-century microscopic mosaics made from butterfly wing scales; and a collection of crackpot letters sent to the Mount Wilson Observatory between 1915 and 1935.
