Behind the scenes at LA’s Natural History Museum

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A museum’s collection is like an iceberg- most of  it isn’t visible. For every painting hanging on a wall or mummy on display, there are dozens, hundreds, even thousands of other works in storage, rarely seeing the light of day.

That’s the case  in spades with Los Angeles’ Natural History Museum, an institution with 35 million different objects in its collection. 35 million different objects! They range from dinosaur bones wrestled from the earth in  Asia to exquisite Mayan artworks crafted in southern Mexico. But the Natural History Museum also has lots of items  and that come from far closer to home and relate directly to Los Angeles’ natural and cultural history.

This summer some of those L.A. items will be brought out of vaults and storage facilities  and be put on permanent exhibit in the “Becoming Los Angeles” hall, a 14,000 square-foot space that will display some of the most precious and fascinating L.A.-related items in the museum’s vast collections. It will be an eclectic bunch of stuff, from ancient Native American jewelry, to religious items from the Mission era, to pieces that reflect L.A.’s cinema history, like the suit Charlie Chaplin wore in the movie “City Lights.”

Together, the Natural History Museum hopes the items will tell visitors about the wide sweep of the city’s history and highlight the forces that created modern-day Los Angeles.

Since the Natural History Museum is, well, a natural history museum many of the exhibits will also depict how human beings changed the very ecosystem of L.A. They often did that by introducing animal and plant species that aren’t native to the region, from small cows brought by the Spaniards to the palm trees that grace the boulevards of Beverly Hills.

Check out some of the behind-the-scenes work going on at the  Natural History Museum as staff races to complete the exhibition in time for its opening in July. And listen here for more on Which Way, LA?

The Los Angeles Natural History Museum has exhibits from the far corners of the earth. The Becoming Los Angeles exhibition will focus on L.A.'s history, and the natural, cultural and technological forces that shaped it.
The Los Angeles Natural History Museum has exhibits from the far corners of the earth. The Becoming Los Angeles exhibition will focus on L.A.’s history, and the natural, cultural and technological forces that shaped it. (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)
Los Angeles County Museum taxidermists Timothy Bovard and Allis Markham prepare a cow for the exhibit It's one of about thirty animals that will be displayed, each telling a story about L.A.'s natural environment and how human beings have changed it over the centuries.The cow is an example of livestock brought to the Los Angeles area by early Spanish settlers. It's covered in damp towels to keep the skin supple for needle and thread taxidermy work.
Los Angeles County Museum taxidermists Timothy Bovard and Allis Markham prepare a cow for the exhibit It’s one of about thirty animals that will be displayed, each telling a story about L.A.’s natural environment and how human beings have changed it over the centuries.The cow is an example of livestock brought to the Los Angeles area by early Spanish settlers. It’s covered in damp towels to keep the skin supple for needle and thread taxidermy work. (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)
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Conservation experts Tania Collas and Elizabeth Homburger are preparing everything from ancient Indian artifacts to relics from Hollywood’s Golden Era for display. (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)