Los Angeles: A Modern Prehistoric Winner

Los Angeles Downtown News: A Modern Prehistoric Winner

OPINION: DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Today’s entertainment scene is dominated by the loud, fast and eye-popping. It’s a culture where celebrities and faux celebrities rule, where over-processed pop music generates huge buzz and where comic book adaptations and three-dimensional technology ensure mammoth press and buckets of money.

There’s nothing wrong with this system per se — it is what it is. However, it is interesting that amidst this cultural moment, the Natural History Museum has pulled off a modern prehistoric winner. The Exposition Park facility recently opened the Dinosaur Hall, which may prove to be, at least for the Downtown area, the most important debut during the summer of 2011. The benefits for the community will last much longer than any Hollywood blockbuster.

It looks like the NHM has a winner in the exhibit that includes more than 300 fossils and 20 full-body specimens. It’s an extraordinary accomplishment, one completed when the economy has been weak and nonprofits across the country have been suffering.

Dinosaur Hall, which Los Angeles Downtown News wrote about last week, has been in the works for a long time. It is also only a mid-point in a seven-year, $135 million upgrade of a facility that had grown fairly worn around the edges. Last year the museum restored a nearly century-old edifice and debuted its The Age of Mammals exhibit. Other additions will take place through 2013, and will change the main entrance and the area in front of the museum.

The past and the future changes are important, but as most anyone will tell you, there’s something special about dinosaurs. The NHM aimed big with a 14,000-square-foot display (double the previous dinosaur exhibition space) and has a ready audience of school groups, families and tourists. They’ll traipse through the galleries to see the three Tyrannosaurus rex specimens. They’ll ogle the Triceratops, the armor-plated Stegosaurus and the Mamenchisaurus, a creature with an impossibly long neck. They’ll spend hours wandering through the museum.

The upgrades dovetail with recent improvements at the neighboring California Science Center. Last year, that institution completed a $165 million renovation, the highlight of which was a 45,000-square-foot permanent exhibition titled Ecosystems. Suddenly, the park at the southern end of the Figueroa Corridor has a double bang. The combined $300 million worth of upgrades will ensure a steady stream of visitors for years.

Nothing moves quickly in the museum world, especially when dealing with dinosaurs. NHM staff spent a decade uncovering fossils in places like Montana and Wyoming. More time and money was spent in Los Angeles assembling the bones and then creating interactive displays that would appeal to children and adults.

Whatever it took was worth it. Dinosaur Hall is fascinating. The NHM should be proud of a job well done.