With the hope of getting more people through their doors, Natural History Museum officials are opening the venue’s new “front porch” this Sunday, Nov. 17 with a free community block party that will include live music, food and even a dinosaur.
“We really want to be a place that the community sees is for them. So it’s important for us to have a space that people can come into and feel like they’re welcomed and they belong here,” said Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga, president and director of the Natural History Museum during a media preview of the museum’s new wing and community hub dubbed NHM Commons.
The 75,000-square foot indoor/outdoor space, which museum officials describe as the venue’s new “front porch,” took seven years and $75 million to complete and consists of an outdoor plaza facing a transparent glass façade. Inside the glass walls on the first floor of the indoor portion of the wing is a multipurpose theater and an offshoot of South LA Cafe, which is a well-known coffee shop that opened in 2019 at the corner of Western Avenue and MLK Boulevard. The second floor houses the Judith Perlstein Welcome Center and the 3,000-square-foot Theater Gallery. Entrance to the NHM Commons is free.
“This all just feels light, and hopeful, and I think we need hope,” Bettison-Varga said as she stood in the new cafe and looked around the interior space and out the glass walls at the plaza.
The Nov. 17 block party will include food trucks, music, live performances, a dance lesson by Queerchata and sets from KCRW’s DJ Tyler Boudreaux and DJ Linda Nuves.
Much of the celebration will take place at the plaza and garden, where museum officials worked with a Native American Advisory Council to create a tranquil yet dynamic space that features two oak trees and several rock islands decorated with colorful native plants. The plants and rocks symbolize the city’s mountain ranges while a cement path that winds through them is meant to be the Los Angeles river system flowing from the mountains, through the L.A. Basin and into the ocean.
“It’s very exciting to see the echoes of the beautiful mountain ranges that we have here in L.A.,” said Lila Higgins, co-senior manager for community science for the museum. “These are plants you see in the mountains, in the neighborhoods around L.A. and it’s really exciting to see them on the front doorstep of the museum,” she added.
Another part of the plaza has an area that features a Native American grinding stone and more native plants. The plaza is meant as the entrance to the interior space.
Once inside, visitors will see the Commons Theater, where so far plans call for the 400-seat spot to host film series, community events, performances, lectures and more. There is already programming in place that will include screenings of the new movie “T.REX 3D,” which animates the life of a T. rex dinosaur, and performances of “Ocean Encounters,” a live show that features life-size sea creature puppets in a prehistoric undersea tale. Some of the events at the theater will require purchased tickets.
The NHM Commons also offers people a look at what’s inside the museum in the W.M. Keck Foundation’s Theater Gallery. Located upstairs, the 3,000-square-foot gallery displays about a dozen large poster-size digital images of items in the museum’s collection, including fossils, sculptures and animal specimens.
Next to the gallery is the Judith Perlstein Welcome Center, an airy space with lounge seating by big windows that face the plaza. But people’s attention will likely be drawn to the massive 75-foot dinosaur skeleton named Gnatalie.
With its long neck facing the entrance and its tail extended in the air, the skeleton stretches across nearly half of the room. According to museum officials, Gnatalie is the most complete sauropod skeleton on the West Coast, and the first green dinosaur fossil to be mounted for display worldwide. The unusual color came from green minerals absorbed by the bones while its name came from the gnats that plagued excavators while they worked to unearth the fossil in Utah.
Across from the dinosaur covering about 80-feet of wall is artist Barbara Carrasco’s mural “L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective.” Created in 1981, the colorful mural contains dozens of vignettes woven into the flowing hair of a woman depicting the chronological history of Los Angeles, from its original inhabitants to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II to the Zoot Suit Riots to freeways. There’s even a nod to the Los Angeles Dodgers with an image of legendary pitcher Sandy Koufax alongside Dodger Stadium.
“This space makes me so happy because of the awe you feel, the awe of that green dinosaur and the awesome storytelling in the mural and the acknowledgment of what truly is L.A. history,” Bettison-Varga said.
The Welcome Center then leads to the museum’s ticket booth and entrance.
“We want everyone to come in and explore and be a part of this place,” Bettison-Varga said.
NHM Commons Block Party
When: 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. May 17
Where: Natural History Museum, 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles
Cost: Free
Information: nhm.org
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