Most communities, even the smallest, have a museum, although it might be so obscure or specialized that the general public isn’t aware it exists or can’t be bothered.
Many are devoted to local or cultural history. A few are housed in sites that are themselves historic. Some showcase collections of taxidermy, or glass, or trains, or computers.
(Those are actual Inland Empire museums: Riverside’s World Museum of Natural History, Redlands’ International Glass Museum, Perris’ Southern California Railway Museum and Claremont’s Paul Gray Personal Computing Museum.)
Todd Lerew began visiting these micro museums a decade ago. By 2018, when the Los Angeles Central Library asked him to organize an exhibit about collecting, he’d been to 200 museums. Then he got serious.
Lerew estimates that Greater Los Angeles — Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties, and the populous portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties — has 800 such museums.
He’s visited more than 700 so far.
What’s probably the culmination of his effort is “Also on View,” a book subtitled “Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles.” Angel City Press published it in 2024. Lerew and photographer Ryan Schude profiled dozens of museums.
After learning that several were in the Inland Empire, I was curious enough to attend a talk last November at the Central Library in which Lerew and Schude were interviewed by Tom Carroll.
Buying the book afterward, I examined the contents page while standing in line for autographs. Of the book’s 64 museums, 13 are in San Bernardino or Riverside counties. Another two are in Claremont and one is in Glendora.
As we’re accustomed to being underrepresented, Lerew’s inclusive approach is disorienting. But refreshing!
“If anything, the Inland Empire is overrepresented,” Lerew admitted later by phone, “which is unusual. A lot of my colleagues in L.A. cultural circles really never go east of the city.”
Lerew lives in L.A., in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, and produces exhibits and public programs on behalf of the L.A. Library Foundation. But he’s naturally curious. Another reason for his widescreen perspective: His wife, Bridget Marrin, is from Redlands.
As to what constitutes a museum, Lerew takes an expansive view there as well.
“There’s a lot of gray areas,” he said: children’s museums, nature centers, college and community art galleries.
His baseline: Is it open to the public? And is there a collection of stories or objects that they want to share with the public? If so, he counts it.
“It made sense to me to be more inclusive. I’m not here to be the gatekeeper of what is a museum,” Lerew said during his library talk.
That said, “a lot of them aren’t very accessible. The Westminster Historical Society is open three hours a month,” Lerew continued. “Some don’t have any regular hours or are open only by appointment.”
Given the distances he was traveling, Lerew would arrange his visits strategically, hitting as many as five museums a day. Volunteers were sometimes perplexed by his interest.
“When I said I was from L.A.,” Lerew shared, “they would look at me funny, because nobody from outside this immediate community goes there.”
Some weren’t interested in being interviewed or photographed for his book or never got back to him.
The owners of Altadena’s Bunny Museum were said to have been worried about being made fun of. Its collection of 60,000 objects has since been lost to the Eaton fire.
Lerew’s aim was not to produce a guidebook but rather to memorialize institutions, some of them fragile, at a point in time. There were coups. He got an interview with Milt Larsen, co-founder of Hollywood’s Magic Castle, shortly before his death.
Same with Albert Okura, who established San Bernardino’s First Original McDonald’s Museum at the site of the original McDonald’s. Okura, who also founded the Juan Pollo restaurant chain, met with Lerew and Schude not long before his unexpected death in January 2023.
While Lerew’s tone throughout “Also on View” is earnest and respectful, he has an impish sense of humor. He refers to Okura’s quirky, self-published autobiography, “The Chicken Man With a 50 Year Plan,” as “a work of outsider art in the field of corporate CEO memoirs.”
“What an amazing character he was,” Lerew told me. “He’s just one of those cultural characters who made the whole project worthwhile.”
Another of Lerew’s favorite IE museums is the Edward-Dean Museum and Gardens. Built in Cherry Valley by two antiques collectors, it was deeded to Riverside County in 1964 under the proviso that nothing substantial could change.
“They’re really not allowed to move anything,” Lerew said.
What may qualify as the smallest and largest museums in his book are both in the Inland Empire.
The largest is Perris’ Railway Museum, which sprawls over more than 100 acres. Lerew justifies its inclusion amid the micro museums because it’s “an underappreciated gem.”
The smallest is the Cucamonga Service Station Museum, housed in a 1915 gas station, painted bright yellow, that might be the oldest survivor in California. Its single room might be only 20 square feet. But Lerew terms it “a little yellow jewel box of the Inland Empire.”
At the library talk, someone asked if Lerew ever felt trapped in conversations with docents obsessed with minutiae. Schude, the photographer, joked: “There’s no exhausting his curiosity. It might flip-flop and they’re looking at how they can get out of the conversation.”
Lerew maintains a website, everymuseum.la, with an interactive map of links to all the museums he’s aware of, currently at 798. He assumes he’s probably been to more of them than any other person. And he’s not done yet.
“I just went to the Barbara Greenwood Kindergarten,” Lerew told me recently of the Pomona facility, his 720th museum visit. “I’m still very slowly checking off places I haven’t been to.”
David Allen writes very hurriedly every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.