The Atlas Obscura Podcast Meet the Man Visiting 800 Museums in LA
Mar 25, 2026
Todd LaRue, director of special projects and author who spent a decade touring hundreds of Los Angeles museums. He talks about how his roadside and folk-site interests launched the project. He defines what counts as a museum and the geographic scope he used. He shares quirky finds like street lighting archives, nostalgia-filled Valley Relics, and a surprising Vietnamese-American history museum.
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Museums As ALens Into Place
- Todd LaRue turned a personal interest in roadside curiosities and folk art environments into a decade-long project visiting small, little-known museums across Greater Los Angeles.
- He started after moving to LA for music composition, realized many local historical societies lacked web presence, and set out to document them in person.
Flexible Rules For A Massive Catalog
- Defining geographic scope and what counts as a museum is fuzzy, so Todd set practical boundaries: LA, Orange, Ventura counties and the Inland Empire, and inclusive criteria for museum types.
- He counts nonprofit and for-profit collections, limited-hours volunteer-run displays, non-collecting art spaces, and even small on-site exhibits if staff direct him to them.
Thousands Of Miles And Weekend Museum Marathons
- The project demanded massive time and travel, taking many thousands of miles and years of weekend visits, yet Todd framed it as a meaningful way to know his city.
- He described visiting five museums in a day, treating it like completism similar to visiting every branch library in L.A. County.
