Located within Exposition Park, the museum’s highlights include a dinosaur hall with fossils and skeletons, a butterfly and spider pavilion, and three halls of wildlife habitat dioramas. There is also a 150,000-specimen gem and mineral hall full of gold, diamonds, and other sparkly distractions, as well as nature gardens housing more than 600 types of plants. A central rotunda features paintings illustrating scientific findings about the prehistoric world. If you’re traveling with children, don’t miss Dinosaur Encounters, a 15-minute live show with life-size dino puppets.
The museum is across the street from the University of Southern California’s Exposition Park campus. You can take the E Line to the Expo Park/USC and Expo/Vermont stations from downtown Los Angeles. Drivers can park in the Blue Structure on Figueroa Boulevard.
The museum is open Monday through Sunday, but is closed on the first Tuesday of the month. Visiting outdoor exhibits such as the butterfly and spider pavilion and the edible plants garden is best during spring and summer. When the adjacent Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum hosts USC football games during the fall and winter, plan on facing extra crowds and traffic.
You can easily spend an entire day exploring Exposition Park, a swathe of urban green space in South Los Angeles. In addition to the Natural History Muesum, the park hosts the LA Memorial Coliseum, the Exposition Park Rose Garden, and the California Science Center, where the space shuttle Endeavour docks. The California African American Museum and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art are also within a stone's throw of each other.
