As the Monty Python folks would say … and now for something completely different!
Or completely strange. And completely wonderful.

Here’s some good, old-fashioned museum homage. To a 21st century Ajeeb Ghar/Wonder House. An Ajeeb Ghar to beat all Ajeeb Ghars: the odd and endlessly intriguing Museum of Jurassic Technology.

As a museum, its a unique one-off. Nothing you’ve seen or are likely to see in the 21st century American museum world quite prepares you for this. You arrive at a tiny, unprepossessing storefront off Venice Boulevard in L.A.  You look around, slightly baffled, even though the banner announces that you’re at the right place. You knock. But once you step inside, its magic. You are transported, “guided along as it were a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life” (as the opening quote from Charles Vincent Peale suggests) into a dimly lit museum space that seems oddly out of sync with the bustle outside, dedicated not to reason and certainty and what we know, but to imagination and uncertainty and what we don’t know. Continue reading →