The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has received a US$1m (£610,000, 680,000 euro) grant to fund its new permanent exhibition.

The James Irvine Foundation - a private, not-for-profit grantmaking organisation - has stumped up the cash for the museum’s Under the Sun: Los Angeles, California and the World exhibition, which is scheduled to open in 2012.

Under the Sun will use hundreds of artifacts from the museum’s collection of natural and cultural history objects - as well as immersive exhibits, interactive technology and media installations - to explore how the relationship between human populations and the natural environment has shaped the history and culture of Southern California.

The 14,000sq ft of gallery space will showcase objects ranging from 65 million-year-old fossils to Walt Disney’s first animation desk.

The president and director of the museum, Jane Pisano, said: “We are very grateful to the James Irvine Foundation for recognising the importance of Under the Sun, an exhibition that will dramatise as never before the interactions between natural and human processes that have shaped Los Angeles from prehistoric times to the present day.”

The project is part of the museum’s NHM Next scheme, which is an initiative launched in 2007 with the intention of transforming 81,000sq ft (more than half) of the museum’s public space.

As part of the scheme, the Age of Mammals exhibition will open this summer, Dinosaur Mysteries in summer 2011 and the Under the Sun exhibition in 2012.