"a gleaming glass entrance pavilion for the Museum"

Kevin Sharer, Chairman, and Paul G. Haaga, President of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Board of Trustees of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, announced that the institution has received the largest private gift dedicated to the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park in its nearly century-long history, enabling it to create a gleaming glass entrance pavilion for the Museum and its new North Campus. The $13 million gift from The Otis Booth Foundation—the largest made to date by the Los Angeles-based private foundation—will allow NHM to provide a focal point for the major new public approach to the Museum, through the landscaped North Campus.

Named the Otis Booth Pavilion in honor of Otis Booth’s service to the Museum and the unprecedented donation, the light-filled, three-story entrance will be connected to Exposition Boulevard by a soaring pedestrian bridge and will dramatically showcase one of the Museum’s signature specimens: its magnificent 63-foot-long fin whale. First exhibited at NHM in 1944, the 7,000-pound specimen was recently the subject of an intense two-year restoration and has been re-articulated to give an accurate and life-like impression of the grace and power of a whale in the midst of a dive. This unforgettable image will now be visible to all from the Exposition Boulevard side of the Museum as a sign of the wonders within—and the gentle glow of its surrounding glass structure will be visible at night from as far away as Downtown.