The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is getting ready to light up after dark. The museum announced it will launch NightTales, a winter lights experience featuring illuminated installations, projections and artwork, running on select nights from November 12, 2026 through January 10, 2027.
According to MyNewsLA.com, NightTales will be open from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the museum's Exposition Park campus, located at 900 Exposition Blvd. The event's centerpiece is the work of Los Angeles-based artist Maggie West, whose time-lapse photography will transform specimens from the museum's collection into illuminated works of art, according to officials cited in that report. West's photography uses color, light and scale to create images of natural subjects, turning scientific specimens into large-format visual pieces.
West's approach isn't new to her practice. In 2019, she completed an artist residency at the California Academy of Sciences, where she photographed scientific specimens from museum collections using multi-colored studio lighting to create illuminated public art rather than relying on post-production manipulation. She later brought large-scale outdoor light installation experience to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where in April 2023 she debuted “Eden,” one of the world's largest 3D photography installations, built from 20 steel structures with dual-palette floral photography and nighttime projection mapping, according to Archilovers.
What Visitors Can Expect on the Grounds
Officials said NightTales will feature illuminated installations and cinematic projections throughout the museum's halls and gardens, spreading the experience across both the historic Beaux-Arts building and its newer outdoor spaces. That indoor space dates back to 1913 and underwent a major historic restoration and seismic retrofit in 2013 for its centennial, per Frommer's Travel Guides. The building's Spanish Renaissance terra cotta carvings and Romanesque arched windows will provide a very different backdrop from the museum's newest wing.
That newest wing is NHM Commons, which the museum describes as a recently opened, community-focused addition intended to connect natural history with science, nature and culture. The $75 million, 75,000-square-foot expansion opened in November 2024 with a glass facade, a 400-seat theater, a public plaza, and Gnatalie, a 75-foot green-tinted sauropod fossil skeleton, according to a report referenced by a local preview of the wing. The addition gives the museum a modernized, glass-enclosed gathering space built for nighttime crowds, a feature that NightTales appears designed to take advantage of.
Dates, Tickets and Pricing
NightTales will run on a rotating schedule rather than nightly through the season. Confirmed dates include November 12-15, November 20, 22-25 and 27-29, December 4-6, 11-13, 18-23 and 26-31, and January 2-10, 2027.
General admission is set at $30 for adults and $25 for children, while museum members will pay a discounted $20. Tickets go on sale to museum members first, on Thursday, August 27, 2026, ahead of a general public on-sale date of September 1, 2026.
A Crowded Field of Winter Light Shows
NightTales enters an already established Southern California tradition of winter light attractions. Descanso Gardens' “Enchanted Forest of Light” celebrated its 10th anniversary season during winter 2025-2026 across a one-mile interactive garden walk, per Descanso Gardens. The Los Angeles Zoo has run its own seasonal illumination event, “L.A. Zoo Lights: Animals Aglow,” since 2014, drawing visitors to Griffith Park each November through January with projections and illuminated animal lantern sculptures, according to Discover Los Angeles.
What sets NightTales apart is its raw material: the museum's own scientific collection. The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County protect and manage over 35 million specimens and artifacts spanning 4.5 billion years, constituting the largest natural and cultural history collection in the western United States, per the institution's own figures. That collection continues to grow through unexpected channels — in August 2026, transportation officials reported that over 500 Ice Age fossils recovered during Metro D Line subway excavations were split between local institutions, with non-asphaltic sediment fossils transferred to the museum, as Hoodline previously reported.
Timing Against a Busy Exposition Park Calendar
NightTales also arrives as the museum works through a packed seasonal calendar. The Butterfly Pavilion closed on August 23, and the annual Spider Pavilion, housing roughly 300 live spiders in the outdoor garden tent, opens on September 20 — a turnover Hoodline covered in its report on the museum's fall pavilion swap.
The light show also lands during a period of major change across the surrounding 160-acre Exposition Park campus. The $1 billion, 300,000-square-foot Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is set to open next door on September 22, 2026, according to Forbes. With that neighboring museum expected to drive heightened foot traffic to the area ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, how the Natural History Museum will manage capacity and crowd flow across its indoor halls and outdoor gardens during NightTales' peak evening hours remains an open question.
