No Dusty Exhibits for This Natural History Museum

Dudley Varner operates out of a makeshift office in an abandoned Newport Beach elementary school, but the less-than-opulent surroundings have not gotten in the way of his grand designs for the fledgling Natural History Museum of Orange County.

After three months on the job as the museum’s full-time executive director and chief curator, Varner said he envisions creating a world-class facility: a main museum of 100,000 square feet on a site of 10-15 acres; a satellite facility in a local shopping mall that will feature life-size animated dinosaur models, and a natural history center at a county paleontological site or other natural history resource.

“It’s very ambitious,” Varner said, “and when you look and see us in a 5,000-square-foot old cafeteria and library, you might wonder if it’s overly ambitious. But we don’t think so.”

The first change under Varner’s leadership arrived earlier this week in the form of a modest, hand-lettered wooden sign. The seemingly minor event officially marked a change in the facility’s name--from the Natural History Museum of Orange County to the Museum of Natural History and Science.

The shift signals Varner’s interest in stepping outside the bounds of a traditional natural history museum to include exhibits in the physical sciences and technology. “We’re not trying to duplicate any existing museums in Los Angeles or San Diego or San Francisco,” he said. “What we’re trying to provide is a unique combination.”

Varner, 49, holds a doctorate in anthropology with an emphasis in archeology and has taught at universities and conducted field studies. He has worked in the museum profession for 20 years, including founding director of the California State Agricultural Museum in Fresno. Before taking his current post in September, he worked for a year as assistant director of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.

The Natural History Foundation of Orange County was formed in 1974, and the current museum site has been in the closed Eastbluff Elementary School since 1985. The organization is run mainly by volunteers, with no public funds.

“They’ve been functioning at a much higher level than I have ever heard of for a museum without a larger professional staff. They’ve basically had one office manager,” Varner said.

“They held this thing together as volunteers and got it to this stage where they knew they needed a professional museum person to come in,” he said. “Now, my job is not to make all of the decisions by any means, but to help provide the options for the board of trustees to select what is really best for the museum and the foundation in the future. I’m looking at new directions and trying to refocus some of the old directions.”

One of Varner’s main tasks since joining the museum has been to plan for an interim site of about 15,000 square feet. He said he hopes to have a permanent display there that would center on life-size animated dinosaurs created by Dinamation, a San Juan Capistrano-based company whose creations have been a hit in museums all over the world.

“The response is tremendous,” Varner said, suggesting that museums with animated dinosaurs can draw more visitors in six weeks than some would attract in an entire year. The dinosaurs would draw attention to the county’s museum, the director said, and help speed development of long-term goals.

Dinosaurs are a popular item, especially among children, so Varner is betting that it’s more than a passing fancy.

“I would never say that it’s only a fad that’s going to be short-lived, because I don’t think we’ll ever know all there is to know about dinosaurs. I think people will always be excited by them,” he said. He pointed to a tiny desk in his office used by his 4-year-old son, Heath, that is covered with drawings of dinosaurs and models of the prehistoric beasts. “He can’t get enough of dinosaurs, and he’s not unusual.”

As Varner said he envisions it, the dinosaur exhibit will include real dinosaur fossils and other informational displays.

“This is not intended to be purely entertainment,” he said. “The critters are the lead-in. They’ll get people there, and the little kids get really excited. But then if you have the backup, you’ve got a wonderful package.”

Varner and the foundation board are considering several locations for the interim site, which could eventually become a permanent satellite facility. A second satellite facility on a site of natural interest is also a possibility. The Pectin Reef paleontological site in south Orange County is one candidate.

The museum is also closing in on selection of the site for the major facility, Varner said. A site near Upper Newport Bay is the current preference, although the museum has also been approached about locating in the planned Bowers museum district in Santa Ana. Varner is confident that once the site is selected, the museum can raise money from private and public sources to build the facility.

“If we have the site, that doesn’t mean we have to immediately go out and raise the $20 million to put the total museum on it,” Varner said. “Museums can be built in increments, kind of like university campuses are.”

The museum would focus on hands-on, experience-oriented exhibits rather than collections, Varner said. “Modern museum exhibits in natural history do not depend on having jars and jars of pickled anythings, or rows and rows of stuffed animals, or those kinds of things,” he said.

“Instead of starting with a bunch of specimens and saying, ‘OK, let’s make an exhibit,’ today the approach is more, ‘Let’s design an exhibit first. We can always borrow things from other museums or make replicas.’ ”

He cited as an example the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque, where recent exhibits have included a walk-through depiction of a live volcano. “We have volcanoes in this state. We, of course, have earthquakes,” Varner said. “There are all kinds of phenomena and processes that can be depicted in a very exciting way.

“People expect more out of museums than they did 10 or 20 years ago,” he said. “There has to be an opportunity for the whole family to be entertained while they’re being educated.”

The Natural History Foundation was created in 1974, largely to house fossil finds uncovered by local developers. The museum has one of the top collections of marine mammal fossils in the country.

“We don’t want to lose track of where we’ve come from and how we got here by any means, so it’s not that we’re de-emphasizing the paleontology of Orange County,” Varner said.

“But now I want to be able, with my experience in other areas, including archeology and anthropology, to look at some other directions that will excite people. And let’s face it, not everybody is going to be equally excited about fossil whales.”

In Varner’s plans, fossils will play a large part in the museum’s research function: “We would really like to have a major fossil-preparation laboratory, part of it open to public viewing, that could process fossils for other museums as well as our own.”

In outlining the museum’s ambitious plans, Varner frequently emphasized that he was not speaking only for himself, but that the museum board supports his goals. “They seem really receptive to the notion of, ‘Let’s plan on a first-class, really a world-class, museum facility,’ ” he said.

“I think Orange County certainly deserves a major museum of natural history. The resources are out there, and on a daily basis, I can see the need.

“If somewhere along the way we have to lower our sights a little bit, or if it takes longer than we plan, then that’s part of the game. But there’s no reason not to shoot for the best, given what we see to be the opportunities and the resources and the need and the desire to have it here.”