Al Malaikah Shriners to Open Museum Inside the Historic Shrine Auditorium

When the Shrine Auditorium opened in 1926, it was billed as the largest theater in the world. Now, the Al Malaikah Shriners are turning part of that landmark into something new: a museum telling their own story.

The Shriners Museum will occupy the auditorium's third floor, with an entrance off of Royal Street, and will document more than a century of Al Malaikah history alongside the story of Shriners Children's Southern California.

"This Museum is being created to preserve more than objects and dates," said Raffi Barsamian, past potentate and current recorder and chief of staff of Al Malaikah. "It will preserve the stories of the Southern California Shriners who built this organization, cared for children, strengthened their community and sustained a tradition of service across generations. We want visitors to understand both the history and the human impact behind it."

Al Malaikah Shriners has called the building home since it opened, and it seats more than 6,300 people today. Housing the museum there was an intentional choice, said Adelheid Waumboldt, director of the Shriners Museum and founder of ISET, a communications agency specializing in legacy architecture.

"The general modern public in Los Angeles may not be as familiar today with the Shriners and their great work as they were 50 years ago, but everyone in the city knows the grand Shrine Auditorium," she said. "The museum is the binding factor designed to share the Al Malaikah Shriners' many great works and their legacy of fraternal excellence in public service within the space where many of the iconic moments took place. Even Elvis Presley has played the Shrine Auditorium."

The museum's motto, "Honoring the past. Serving the future," captures what Waumboldt calls a bridge between two worlds: "This is a very special project that builds new legacy while honoring the past.”

The history the museum will document stretches back to the 1940s, when members of Al Malaikah began working to establish a pediatric hospital in Los Angeles. Local Shriners raised roughly $1.5 million toward the effort, and the hospital admitted its first patients in 1952. Over the following decades, it expanded its orthopedic, rehabilitation and prosthetic services, adding the Child Amputee Prosthetics Project in 1988. Shriners Children's Southern California carried that legacy forward with a Pasadena facility that opened in 2017.

"Fraternal organizations, including this one, often involve ritual and camaraderie, but the spectacular Shriners created a palpable, visible, tangible service pipeline through their social activities," said Waumboldt, who is Princess Badoura for Daughters of the Nile Mokattam Temple No. 12. "It is quite the stroke of genius to turn sales and donations from social events into lifesaving medical centers, treatments and surgeries for children."

Working to turn that history into museum exhibits will be 32 University of Southern California students, split into eight cohorts and supervised by Shriners with expertise in their respective fields. The internships run through USC Dornsife Career Pathways, in partnership with Octavio Avila, the program's director, and courses like MDA 250: Internship for the Liberal Arts. Students –ranging from freshmen through master's candidates and drawn from multidisciplinary backgrounds – will handle historical research, cataloging and archival work, exhibition planning, architectural design, communications, digital media and educational programming.

The partnership builds on a relationship between USC and Shriners that predates the museum by decades. The Shrine Auditorium has stood across from USC's University Park campus for generations, serving at various times as a home court for Trojan basketball and the site of USC commencement ceremonies.

"USC students bring the curiosity, creativity and range of disciplines that a project like this needs," Waumboldt said. "Our collaboration with USC Dornsife Career Pathways creates meaningful opportunities for students to gain practical experience while contributing to the development of a museum that is historically responsible, engaging and forward-looking."

The Shriners Museum is currently in its development phase, and Waumboldt estimates that the team has at least a year’s worth of work ahead before it can open to the public. But she believes the effort will be worth it.

"A century from now, visitors to the museum will see that the Shriners dedicated a great portion of their personal and professional lives to improving and often saving children's lives while uniting in friendship, fellowship and having quite a lot of fun along the way.”