QUICK TAKES - April 24, 2009

Life-size dinosaur puppets roaming the halls of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are not all that’s going on at the Exposition Park institution. After years of retrofitting, restoring and renovating, the museum is gearing up to reopen its historic core -- a 1913 Beaux Arts structure designed by Hudson & Munsell that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

With the first phase of the $91-million project complete, plans are underway for inaugural exhibitions in renovated spaces. The rotunda, the hub of the original building, and one of its wings, the Age of Mammals hall, will open in summer 2010.

The rotunda, topped by a stained-glass, domed skylight, will be outfitted with display cases for a changing array of weird and wonderful objects -- bones, eggs and, yes, fur balls -- in the museum’s vast collections.

The mammals installation will track the creatures’ evolution in response to climate change over 65 million years.

The Dinosaur Mysteries hall, on the opposite side of the rotunda, is expected to open in summer 2011 with an installation that addresses dinosaur questions that have sparked scientific research and the popular imagination.

-- Suzanne Muchnic