By William Pannapacker
Amid all the major events of the MLA convention, it’s easy to
overlook sessions that do not obviously address the concerns of
the entire profession, and some of those more specialized events can
be real gems—the sort of event that you’ll remember when the
controversies of the moment have been forgotten.
So, for my last installment, I thought I’d reflect on the sessions
dedicated to the work of David Wilson, curator of the Museum of
Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, in Culver
City on Venice Boulevard. It presents itself as “an educational
institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public
appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.”
What you’ll find in the museum is not so easily categorized: For
example, one exhibit is dedicated to the “Deprong Mori of the
Tripsicum Plateau.” It is a type of bat, the telephone narration
device tells us, that has evolved to use echo-location to fly through
solid objects. In the display is what seems to be a large block of
lead, used by a field biologist to trap the Deprong Mori. Apparently,
the bats are only able to fly through objects of lesser density, such
as human beings.
Upstairs, one is greeted by a shrine to the dogs of the Soviet space
program, such as the famous Strelka. A newer installation presents
the nearly lost folk traditions of the cat’s cradle; another—perhaps
the most beautiful of all—is about the mystical theories of Athanasius
Kircher, “the last man to search for universal knowledge.” There are
many other exhibits—the museum is larger than its exterior
suggests—and all of them are fascinating, like the mysterious,
nostalgic boxes of Joseph Cornell.
Perhaps it’s about the preservation of nearly lost
knowledge—remembrances of things past—but the museum also challenges
the visitor to find absurdity amid the solemnity. Some describe the
MJT as a “meta-museum,” a commentary on the role that such
institutions have played in Western culture.
In 1996 the MJT was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by
Lawrence Weschler: Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants,
Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology.
In 2001 Wilson received a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and his
work was the subject an NPR discussion that year.
I’ve been fascinated by the MJT from afar since that time and have
become a regular visitor of the Web site, as well as a reader of the
books recommended there on topics such as the history of museums, the
art of nature illustration, and magic. I’ve also toured the museum
via a DVD called Inhaling the Spore: A Journey Through the Museum of
Jurassic Technology.
So, it was a great thrill for me to finally experience the museum on
Friday and an even greater one to see David Wilson in person at two
sessions hosted by the MLA on Saturday: one a “creative conversation,”
the other a series of analyses of the museum followed by discussion.
Both were well attended.
In the first session, Wilson led the audience on a PowerPoint tour of
the MJT, accompanied by music. Narrating in a calm, sincere, possibly
deadpan voice, Wilson described the origin of his calling: his
childhood love of museums as “hallowed, sanctified spaces—temples to
the human effort to understand.”
“What I wanted to do more than anything,” Wilson said, “was to create
a public institution.” He eventually majored in literature and
biology, and later became interested in film before founding the Los
Angeles museum in 1988, after several years of running it as a
traveling show.
Kircher, a 17th-century German Jesuit scholar, has been a kind of
patron saint for this project, since he was, as Wilson describes him,
“a polymath who worked in all fields and whose knowledge we now know
was completely false.” Wilson’s museum is not about the creation of
new paradigms—new structures of power and knowledge—but rather the
drive to create meaning, to believe that we can find “the hidden knots
that bind the world,” perceive the beauty of very small things, and to
take pleasure in remembering our place in a long sequence of failed
utopias.
The museum sometimes provokes laughter and, occasionally, tears, for
reasons that people can’t easily explain. An audience member said it
was “like visiting the house of your grandparents.” Some of the
panelists focused on the cinematic experience of the MJT: the role of
light, sound, and the unfolding of a narrative as one passes through
the exhibits. One commented on its place in the cultures of Western
imperialism. Another said the museum commemorates “imaginative
possibilities that have been abandoned.”
The panels with David Wilson were illuminating, but, in the end, the
Museum of Jurassic Technology is such a personal experience that you
just have to see it for yourself. My experience of the MJT is that it
re-creates the childhood experience of going to a museum: the openness
to mystery that we lose as adults for whom there are established
structures of knowledge. It evokes playfulness tinged with tragedy: a
toy shop and a columbarium.
There is an uncelebrated, smaller-scale MLA convention that is no less
valuable than the big panels and the academic dustups that you can
read about later. It’s a large enough event to bring together people
with shared interests who might not otherwise find each other,
particularly when that interest is connected to some feature of the
host city.
William Pannapacker is an associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He is a Chronicle columnist (under the pen name “Thomas H. Benton”), and this is his third year live-blogging the MLA convention.
