Orcas take center stage at Natural History Museum in immersive new exhibit, “Orcas: Our Shared Future”

By Michelle Edgar

At a time when Los Angeles continues to explore how culture, science, and storytelling can deepen public connection, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened a major new exhibition that dives beneath the surface of one of the ocean’s most powerful and misunderstood creatures.

“Orcas: Our Shared Future,” which opened Sunday at the museum in Exposition Park, is a 10,000-square-foot multimedia experience examining the relationship between orcas, humanity, and the future of the oceans. The exhibition brings together science, culture, conservation, and immersive design through approximately 140 original artifacts and specimens, including an articulated adult female orca skeleton sculpture and a life size family of three replica orcas.

Visitors will explore how orcas live and communicate, and sustain ocean ecosystems.

“Orcas are iconic marine mammals that have captured the imagination of people all over the world,” said Jorge Velez-Juarbe, Associate Curator of Marine Mammals at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “This immersive exhibition is a compelling look at their lives from their unique biology, complex social dynamics, and the ways that Orcas are represented, and sometimes misrepresented, in art and popular culture.”

The exhibition also explores how orcas have been viewed through history, from Indigenous cultural reverence along the Pacific Northwest Coast to modern portrayals in entertainment and media, asking visitors to reconsider what they think they know about these apex predators.

“As a marine mammal specialist, I am inspired by Orcas to study echolocation and other aspects of toothed whale evolution. They are also critically endangered animals made vulnerable by pollution, food scarcity, and noise and other human mediated risks,” Velez-Juarbe said.”I hope that visitors leave this exhibition feeling moved to protect these amazing creatures and, by extension, our oceans.”

Museum leaders say the exhibit is designed not only to educate but to inspire stewardship, highlighting the connection between marine biodiversity and human choices. For Los Angeles, a city defined by coastline, environmental innovation, and cultural influence, “Orcas: Our Shared Future” arrives reminding Angelenos that the future of the Pacific is deeply tied to the decisions made on land.