The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the

western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...

. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large collection is comprised not only of specimens for exhibition, but also of vast research collections housed on and offsite. The museum is associated with two other museums in

Greater Los Angeles Greater Los Angeles is the second-largest metropolitan region in the United States with a population of 18.5 million in 2021, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino Co ...

: the Page Museum at the

La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gr ...

Hancock Park Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The park's destinations include the La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, which displ ...

and the

William S. Hart Ranch and Museum William Surrey Hart (December 6, 1864 – June 23, 1946) was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered as a foremost Western star of the silent era who "imbued all of his characters with honor and integ ...

in Newhall. The three museums work together to achieve their common mission: "to inspire wonder, discovery, and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds."

History

NHM opened in Exposition Park,

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

in 1913 as The Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building with fitted marble walls and domed and colonnaded rotunda, is on

The National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. Additional wings opened in 1925, 1930, 1960, and 1976. The museum split in 1961 into The Los Angeles County Museum of History and Science and the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

(LACMA). LACMA moved to new quarters on

Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...

in 1965, and the Museum of History and Science was renamed The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Eventually, the museum renamed itself again, becoming The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History - Hall of African Mammals

In 2003, the museum began a campaign to transform its exhibits and visitor experience. The museum reopened its seismically retrofitted renovated 1913 rotunda, along with the new ''Age of Mammals'' exhibition in 2010. Its Dinosaur Hall opened in July 2011. A new Los Angeles history exhibition, ''Becoming Los Angeles'', opened in 2013. The outdoor Nature Gardens and Nature Lab, which explore L.A. wildlife, also opened in 2013.

Research and collections

The museum maintains research and collections in the following fields: * Annelida *

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

and

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...

Ethnology Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

Crustacea Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group c ...

Echinoderm An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the ...

s *

Entomology Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as ara ...

Herpetology Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians ( gymnophiona)) and ...

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

Ichthyology Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish ( Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish ( Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Oct ...

Invertebrate paleontology Invertebrate paleontology (also spelled invertebrate palaeontology) is sometimes described as invertebrate paleozoology or invertebrate paleobiology. Whether it is considered to be a subfield of paleontology, paleozoology, or paleobiology, this ...

Malacology Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...

Mammalogy In zoology, mammalogy is the study of mammals – a class of vertebrates with characteristics such as homeothermic metabolism, fur, four-chambered hearts, and complex nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part ...

Mineralogy Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the proce ...

Ornithology Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and t ...

Vertebrate paleontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord. It also tries to connect, by us ...

The museum has three floors of permanent exhibits. Among the most popular museum displays are those devoted to animal

habitats In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

cultures, The Ralph M. Parsons Discovery Center and Insect Zoo, and the new Nature Lab, which explores urban wildlife in Southern California. The museum's collections are strong in many fields, but the mineralogy and Pleistocene paleontology are the most esteemed, the latter thanks to the wealth of specimens collected from The La Brea Tar Pits. The museum has almost 30 million specimens representing marine zoology. These include one of the largest collections of

marine mammal Marine mammals are aquatic mammals that rely on the ocean and other marine ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their ...

remains in the world, housed in a warehouse off site, which at over 5,000 specimens is second in size only to that of

The Smithsonian The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. The museum's collection of historical documents is held in The Seaver Center for Western History Research.

Special exhibits

The museum hosts regular special exhibitions which augment its collections and advance its mission. Recent special exhibits have included Mummies and

Pterosaur Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 ...

s. The museum also hosts a butterfly pavilion outside every spring and summer and a spider pavilion on the same site in the fall. Since 2017, the museum has hosted a special exhibit about

P-22 P-22 ( – December 17, 2022) was a wild mountain lion who resided in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California, on the eastern side of the Santa Monica Mountains. P-22 was first identified in 2012 and was the subject of significant media attenti ...

, the

mountain lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. ...

that lived in nearby

Griffith Park Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park includes popular attractions such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Autry Museum of the ...

Architecture

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Rotunda

Over the years, the museum has built additions onto its original building. Originally dedicated when The Natural History Museum opened its doors in 1913, the rotunda is one of the museum's most elegant and popular spaces. Lined with marble columns and crowned by a stained glass dome, the room is also the home of the very first piece of public art funded by

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

, a Beaux-Arts statue by

Julia Bracken Wendt Julia Bracken Wendt, (1870–1942) a notable American sculptor, was born on June 10, 1871 in Apple River, Illinois, the twelfth of thirteen children in an Irish Catholic family.Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer, ‘’American Women Sculptors: A H ...

entitled ''Three Muses'', or ''History, Science and Art''. This hall is among the most distinctive locales in Los Angeles and has often been used as a filming location.

References

External links

*
William S. Hart Ranch and Museum

George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits
at

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, July 19, 2011
Slide show of exhibitOne of the famous Diamonds Collection in Exhibition of L.A. COUNTY MUSEUM, Recently exhibited in Taiwan Auction House, December 6, 2020
{{DEFAULTSORT:Natural History Museum Of Los Angeles County Museums in Los Angeles Exposition Park (Los Angeles)

Archaeological museums in California Dinosaur museums in the United States Geology museums in California History museums in California Mesoamerican art museums in the United States Mineralogy museums Native American museums in California Science museums in California Science and technology in Greater Los Angeles Botanical gardens in California Butterfly houses Gardens in California Paleontology in California Government buildings completed in 1913 Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles Association of Science-Technology Centers member institutions Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Museums established in 1913 1913 establishments in California Beaux-Arts architecture in California Mediterranean Revival architecture in California South Los Angeles Native Americans in Los Angeles