These Offbeat Los Angeles Museums Celebrate the Strange and Unusual

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On May 27, Sci-Fi World, a museum founded by the nonprofit Hollywood Science Fiction Foundation, opened in Santa Monica, California. Initial exhibits include a “Hall of Heroes” and a “Hall of Robots,” as well as those dedicated to Star Trek, Star Wars, and the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion.

Los Angeles County boasts more than 100 museums, some of which specialize in strange and unusual subject matter for curiosity seekers. Although L.A. has the expected mainstream museums dedicated to art, the movie industry, natural history, science, and automobiles, there are a few weird museums featuring collections that one might not usually associate with sunny Southern California.

Even L.A.’s more recognizable museums sometimes feature offbeat exhibitions that celebrate weirdness. An entire floor of the Academy Museum is currently dedicated to “ John Waters: Pope of Trash,” featuring props, costumes, memorabilia, interactive displays, and more from the cult director of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Hairspray, and Serial Mom.

The Hollywood Museum, located in the historic Max Factor building in Hollywood, features scripts, costumes, and props from classic Hollywood movies, including a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Downstairs, however, is the “Dungeon of Doom,” catering to horror fans. There, visitors can view Hannibal Lecter’s jail cell from The Silence of the Lambs, life masks — plaster casts made of people’s faces — of iconic actors, and props from both classic and obscure horror movies.

Although all of the aforementioned museums feature strange and unusual collections, the following four institutions take “weird” to the next level in Los Angeles.

A Museum That Questions Museum Displays

One of the weirdest museums in Los Angeles, or any city, is the Museum of Jurassic Technology, located in Culver City. The MJT purports to be “an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.” It’s actually a labyrinth of darkened rooms featuring oddities such as a human horn, trailer park artifacts, floral radiographs, microminiatures, interactive displays, and wild scientific theories that should challenge a visitor to question if what they are seeing is legitimate or if we are conditioned to accept things as truth because of how they are presented in an authoritative museum context.

For example, the Delani/Sonnabend Hall explores the intersecting lives of an alleged opera singer named Madelena Delani and a memory researcher named Geoffrey Sonnabend. These two individuals almost assuredly never existed. 

But, presented in a museum exhibit with photographs, artifacts, interactive displays, written letters, and a mind-bending visual presentation of Sonnabend’s alleged Obliscence: Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter, most visitors just accept it as truth or appreciate the effort put into being conned. They might even buy a T-shirt featuring Sonnabend’s “memory cone” in the gift shop on the way out.

A Museum of the Macabre

The Museum of Death in Hollywood offers true-crime enthusiasts a look at uncensored videos, photos, and artifacts from some of the most heinous crimes committed in the United States, including the Manson Family, the Black Dahlia, O.J. Simpson, and more. An eerie re-creation of the Heaven’s Gate tragedy — the largest mass suicide on American soil — will leave guests wondering how the museum obtained some of these creepy items.

The museum has actual paintings and artwork by infamous serial killers, funerary-industry antiques, a collection of real human shrunken heads, and graphic morgue photos — including allegedly authentic pictures of slain President John F. Kennedy.

A Museum of Valley Relics

The Valley Relics Museum, founded by San Fernando Valley local Tommy Gelinas, transports visitors to a bygone era. Located in two airplane hangars at Van Nuys Airport, the Valley Relics Museum features a carefully curated collection of historic neon signs, classic cars, and vintage restaurant menus, yearbooks, art, Western clothing, and BMX bicycles that together helped shape the Valley’s identity.

The museum also features a Family Fun Arcade with several playable pinball and arcade machines for retro enthusiasts and their children.

A Museum Dedicated to Bunnies

According to its official website, the Bunny Museum currently boasts 46,001 bunny objects. Located in Altadena, a 14-mile hop from Downtown Los Angeles, the Bunny Museum “tells the history of bunnies in advertising, art, entertainment, fashion, film, and everyday vernacular.” Curated by husband-and-wife founders Steve Lubanski and Candace Frazee, the Bunny Museum opened in 1998 and features bunny figurines, toys, art, antiques, and Rose Parade paraphernalia.

Although the museum started as a collection of cute bunny items, Lubanski and Frazee added a Chamber of Hop Horrors to educate people about the mistreatment of bunnies throughout history. Visitors who go down this rabbit hole will learn about bunnies in horror films, lab experimentation, “lucky” rabbit-foot keychains, and more.

This article was produced by Media Decision and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.