Find Out What’s on the Horizon for Natural History Museum Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a great city for family travel with a seemingly endless list of attractions and activities. In 2024, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County gives families even more reasons to love this city with great updates to the existing museum.

Exposition Park, home of NHMLAC, is a great destination for a day (or two) of family fun in Los Angeles. In addition to Natural History Museum, you will also find California Science Center (home of the Space Shuttle Endeavor), California African American Museum, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and BMO Stadium.

Construction is underway to bring an addition to the park’s NHMLAC by next fall, NHM Commons. The 75,000-square-foot space embraces the museum’s ongoing goal of creating an intersection for science, nature and culture. Once the space is unveiled (a combination of new construction, renovation of existing space and new landscape), it will include a 400-seat multipurpose theater, a café with both indoor and outdoor seating, and a welcome center.

NHM Commons will feature two focal points: a 70-foot dinosaur skeleton named Gnatalie and an 80-foot mural titled L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective. Gnatalie is the most complete sauropod skeleton on the West Coast and is considered a green skeleton thanks to the unique green color of the specimen. The mural, painted by local Chicana artist Barbara Carrasco, will serve as an homage to the cultural history of the area by depicting a series of images woven into the hair of “La Reina de Los Angeles” (Queen of Los Angeles).

Gnatalie and the mural will both be located in Judith Perlstein Welcome Center and will not require a museum admission ticket to see. They will be the perfect way to start of your experience as you and your family venture into one of the city’s most significant museums for a day of learning about science and the natural history of the world.