Todd Lerew is curious. He likes lists. And he doesn't like to do things halfway.
That's why he collects pictorial maps, that's why he has visited 248 public libraries in Los Angeles County and 401 of California's 483 municipalities. That's why he recently joined the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Elks, Moose International, Oddfellows and about 50 other clubs, so many that he had to get a separate wallet for his membership cards.
This may seem like a lot of projects for a 37-year-old man, who calls them “acts of compulsive nerdery.” But those interests pale in comparison to Lerew's passion for anonymous museums and collections.
That's the theme of his new book, “Also on View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles,” published this week by Angel City Press at the Los Angeles Public Library.
The volume, an illustrated exploration of 64 museums whose names you are unlikely to know, is based on a decade of research and represents a challenge to all Angelenos who believe they dominate the local cultural landscape.
Skid Row Historical Museum and Archives, from above; Skateboarding Hall of Fame Simi Valley Skateboard Museum; and the Museum of Finnish Folk Art in Pasadena. (Ryan Schude)
These are initiatives (often single-person crossovers) that celebrate fast food, Finnish folk art, Skid Row, skateboarding, vertebrate zoology, and more. Yes, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City is here. Yes, the US Navy Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme and the Cucamonga Service Station Museum too.
The Republic of Vietnam Museum in Westminster? Aimee Semple McPherson's parsonage in Echo Park? The Historical Glass Museum in Redlands? Lerew and photographer Ryan Schude visited them all.
“There is nothing you can say about museums that is true for all of them,” Lerew said one recent morning. “And you can find them everywhere you look.”
In fact, he spoke near the Long Beach boardwalk, surrounded by nondescript skyscrapers and devoid of foot traffic. But one block away is the Outer Limits Tattoo and Museum, opened in 1927.
This was the first of two stops where Lerew planned to hand out copies of the new book to the people in it.
The oldest operating tattoo shop in the US
Clockwise from top left, at Outer Limits Tattoo and Museum in Long Beach: veteran tattoo artist Kari Barba, tattoo designs on display, a jacket from Bert Grimm's Famous Tattoo Studio and a flash display case and tools. (Ryan Schude)
Inside Outer Limits founder and tattoo artist Kari Barba, 64, excitedly unwrapped a copy of the book. Barba, a celebrated tattoo artist and industry pioneer who runs a second tattoo shop in Costa Mesa, said she bought the Long Beach space 20 years ago because “I was really hurt by the idea that the history of the building would be lost.”
Barba led Lerew and a visitor through the restored rooms; the modern tables and tools currently used; the old tools; the templates of anchors, hearts and dragons; the old photographs of tattooed sailors at the defunct Pike Amusement Park; a hand-painted window that workers found hidden in a wall; and, in a corner, a mysterious covered tub.
“You have to see the Vaseline before we go,” Lerew said.
Then Barba and Lerew approached the tub and uncovered it, revealing a glutinous stew of rags and Vaseline, which was once an integral part of the tattoo process; The age of the stew and its precise contents are uncertain.
“I don't know what's in there. “I’m not going to come closer to find out,” Barba said.
“A distinctive odor, too,” Lerew said, leaning in to sniff.
What makes a compulsive collector?
Lerew, who lives with his wife in Lincoln Heights, grew up in rural South Dakota. His family made regular trips to roadside attractions, like the faux cowboy town in Buffalo Ridge and the Corn Palace in Mitchell, where something about “the curious, the unique and the obscure” got under Lerew's skin.
After graduating from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, he came west in 2009 and went to graduate school at CalArts, focusing on experimental music composition. But his attention wandered, a trait that became a professional asset when the Los Angeles Library Foundation hired Lerew as program director in 2015.
Todd Lerew, author of the book “Also on View,” about a surprising little museum in Greater Los Angeles, shows off the map full of museum locations he keeps on his phone.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
In his free hours, he visited other libraries and museums, often six or seven a day, all recorded on a spreadsheet. To find them all, I consulted Boris Stanic's guide, “Museum Companion to Los Angeles,” as well as scanning the web and talking to friends and strangers.
In 2016, after months of hearing from Lerew about his weekend explorations of obscure collections and archives in Southern California, foundation president Ken Brecher assigned Lerew to curate an exhibition about local collectors that became “21 collections: each object has a story. ”
“I've always collected experiences of one kind or another,” Lerew said. “I was simply exploring because I had a private interest and obsession with finding new and unique places and people. “It kind of became formalized when I started working on that exhibition.”
What characterizes a museum?
Lerew said he is eager to see any place that calls itself a museum, whether or not it has nonprofit status or academic credentials or a permanent home. He is also drawn to spaces that may not be called museums but often behave as such, including park visitor centers or university art galleries.
When it comes to selfie-based exercises like the national chain Museum of Ice Cream (which had a pop-up location in Los Angeles in 2017), it's not as interested.
And in each museum carefully examine the source. In most American historical museums, he said, “it's the history of white people in that area,” leaving out much and perhaps whitewashing much more.
“When you go to these places, you just have to be aware of who's telling the story,” he said. “There are always more stories out there.”
By the time his “Collections” exhibition appeared at the Central Library in 2018, Lerew had explored more than 600 locations, recruiting collections that included paper airplanes (from Getty), typewriters (from Tom Hanks), candy wrappers and nests of birds. . From that project came a self-published book, an Instagram campaign (@museumaday) and now the new volume, ready for the coffee table.
By hand, recreate key moments in black history.
A “Black Lives Matter” diorama created by Karen Collins.
(Ryan Schude)
“Oh, big pictures!” Karen Collins said when Lerew arrived at her home in Compton and handed her the book. “I don't know why, but I was imagining something small.”
After all, small is Collins' specialty. Around her living room, miniature dioramas of pivotal moments in African-American history took up much of the horizontal space. Above the fireplace was a “Black Lives Matter” triptych, made for the “21 Collections” exhibition at the Central Library.
Collins, 73, a retired preschool teacher, creates the dioramas, making and arranging miniatures inside shadow boxes made by her husband, Eddie Lewis. It started about 30 years ago, after her son was sent to prison when he was in the 12th grade and she felt “ready to die.”
She pushed back the pain by resolving to portray key figures and moments in black history, to inspire and educate elementary school children, “and let them know that you can overcome anything. …Art saved my life.”
Karen Collins and her Museum of African American Miniatures, a collection of black history dioramas she made and keeps in her Compton home, are featured in “Also on View,” Todd Lerew's book about surprising small museums in the Great Los Angeles.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
Since then, there have been dozens of dioramas depicting scenes from Middle Passage to Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Colin Powell, Obama's inauguration, the Compton Cowboys and Kendrick Lamar.
For years, Collins and her husband brought shadow boxes (their mobile museum) to schools and community events. Lerew saw his work displayed in Leimert Park.
Lerew: “How many of these have you done over the years?”
Collins: “A lot. Because I give them away.”
Beyond the Lerew Central Library exhibit and book, Collins has been commissioned by the Autry Museum (where several dioramas are part of the permanent “Imagined Wests” exhibit), profiled by national media, and chosen to provide a Google doodle for the 60th anniversary of the Greensboro, North Carolina, civil rights sit-ins. His son, still incarcerated, “is proud of me,” he said.
She is now working on a coloring book and hopes to find “a stable place for this museum… so that our children can see its value,” she told Lerew.
“It's a really complicated thing,” Lerew said later, “when it's one person's passion project. …I can't say what might happen to Karen's collection. I have hope. “Time will tell.”
Is Lerew done with small museums yet? At all.
In addition to those featured in the book, he has listed more than 700 large and small Southern California museums on the eachmuseum.la website, which is available now.
Then there's the other list on your phone, where you've entered all the invisible museums you want to visit. World. There are 3,231 of them.
