- calendar_today August 10, 2025
MJT’s collection of marvels endures a fiery trial
The Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) — one of Los Angeles’ most unusual cultural institutions — is still in shock after a nighttime fire last month caused significant structural and smoke damage to the building. The blaze destroyed the museum’s gift shop late on July 8 and left large parts of the building covered in smoke. Total revenue loss is expected to be about $75,000 during the closure. Though the team hopes to reopen sometime next month, the rebuilding process is ongoing.
The MJT occupies a single-story building in Culver City and has carved out a niche but devoted following in Los Angeles since its opening in 1988. The museum, founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson, has attracted curious visitors to its purposely perplexing and occasionally suspect displays for over three decades. The institution purports to be “dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.” In reality, very little of the museum’s collection has anything to do with the Lower Jurassic period, which occurred 183.9 million to 174.1 million years ago. The museum is instead more influenced by a bygone era’s wunderkammers, also known as cabinets of curiosity, that predate museums as we know them today.
In the years since its founding, the MJT has become known for a distinct approach to storytelling in museum exhibitions. On one hand, some of the museum’s displays contain real and fascinating historical artifacts. On the other hand, the museum mixes facts and fictions so deftly that many visitors often aren’t sure what’s true and what’s not. One of MJT’s permanent exhibitions is an ode to the work of the 17th-century polymath and Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher, who was a true historical figure. A second features the ultra-miniature sculptures of Armenian-American artist Hagop Sandaldjian. So tiny are the works that they are displayed on the inside of a needle and sculpted out of a single human hair.
Other exhibits at the MJT dive deeper into the museum’s eccentricity. Dice covered in a variety of fungi and bacteria fill an entire room and are attributed to the well-known magician Ricky Jay. Another exhibition, “The Garden of Eden on Wheels,” provides a visual survey of trailer parks in the greater Los Angeles area. Other galleries include stereographic radiographs of flowers, microscopic mosaics composed of butterfly wing scales, and a strange collection of letters from amateur astronomers to the Mount Wilson Observatory between 1915 and 1935. Since 2005, the MJT has even operated a Russian tea room, which is decorated to replicate the study of Tsar Nicholas II in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
The Fire and Aftermath
In a first-person essay published online, writer Lawrence Weschler, whose 1996 book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder goes into depth about many of the MJT’s exhibits, described the fire in detail. The blaze was first noticed by none other than MJT founder David Wilson, who resides in a home behind the museum. Wilson told Weschler that he noticed the flames and “took off at a dead run” with two fire extinguishers in hand. “It was a ferocious column of flame,” Wilson told Weschler. “There it was, licking its chops as it were.”
Wilson’s extinguishers were not large enough to control the blaze, however. Fortunately, his daughter and son-in-law soon arrived on the scene with a bigger extinguisher and got the fire under control just before the Culver City Fire Department arrived. The firefighters told Wilson that, had they arrived only one minute later, the entire building may have been lost.
If not for the fire, the damage would likely have been minimal to the museum’s gift shop, where the fire originated. Smoke, however, spread throughout the museum. In an email to Weschler, Wilson described the smoke as if “someone had gone through and evenly poured a thin creamy brown liquid over all the surfaces—the walls, the vitrines, the ceiling, the carpets, and eyepieces, everything.” Smoke infiltration of that sort is not only a challenge, but especially so for a facility as dedicated to presentation as the MJT. The museum staff and volunteers have since worked continuously to clean and repair the affected areas, Weschler reports. The task has proven slow and tedious.
In the meantime, Weschler has encouraged supporters to donate to the museum’s general fund. Weschler wrote that, though uncertain, “the MJT will rebound from this, and it is not only in the city’s interest but in that of the entire country’s for the museum to survive.”
A tentative reopening date has not been confirmed. But there’s no doubt that the MJT will reopen and the Museum will return to its peculiar glory — a singular place that defies easy categorization as science, art, or narrative and lives somewhere in between.
