Reservations to visit the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals are included in a General Admission ticket and are available now at ticketing.amnh.org.
Telling the fascinating story of how minerals in their vast diversity formed on Earth, and how humans have used them throughout the millennia for personal adornment, tools, and technology, the Halls’ exhibits include:
a gallery of dazzling gems, including the legendary 563-carat Star of India sapphire, gem crystals like the 632-carat Patricia Emerald, and the Organdie necklace designed by Michelle Ong for Carnet with 110 carats of diamonds, fabulous new specimens, many never before exhibited, including a pair of towering, sparkling amethyst geodes that are among the world’s largest on display, a slice of a 35-million-year-old metasequoia (a petrified dawn redwood from the Cascade Mountains), the 9-pound almandine Subway Garnet discovered under Manhattan’s 35th Street in 1885, and the Tarugo, a 3-foot-tall cranberry-red elbaite tourmaline that is one of the most fantastic mineral crystal clusters ever found, interactive displays illustrating the science of mineralogy, including a dynamic periodic table of chemical elements that demonstrates how they “make minerals” and a temporary exhibition space, the Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery, opening with Beautiful Creatures, an unprecedented display of exquisite historic and contemporary jewelry inspired by animals.
“New Yorkers and visitors have long embraced these Halls as one of the City’s treasures,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History. “Now, with this complete redesign made possible by Allison and Roberto Mignone, the Halls are more spectacular than ever and an even greater resource for learning about the processes that shape our changing planet and make it so endlessly fascinating. With their opening, we not only mark a signal moment in the resurgence of New York City and the renewal of its cultural life, but also, we hope, accelerate its pace.”
The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals are named in honor of Allison and Roberto Mignone, longtime Museum supporters and volunteers. Roberto Mignone is a Museum Trustee and Allison Mignone is vice chair of the Museum’s Campaign.
“When you enter the Halls, you truly feel as if you’ve walked into the world’s jewelry box,” said Allison Mignone. “Currently, my favorite spot is standing in front of the 10-ton rock from the Sterling Mine in New Jersey. Although it may look unassuming in daylight, when it is washed in ultraviolet light, the rock’s brilliance comes alive with fluorescence of red and green. It is simply breathtaking and has to be experienced in person. These Halls, and others in the Museum, take science off the page of textbooks and into the real-life experience of countless families and students. Now more than ever, equal access to education is paramount. We look forward to the time when large numbers of students and school groups and their teachers can visit. Halls like these are crucial and tangible tools that communicate the incredible variety of minerals on Earth and how they relate to our lives.”
Organized by Curator George E. Harlow of the Museum’s Division of Physical Sciences, the exhibits in the redesigned Halls are arranged to show the geological conditions and processes by which minerals form: igneous, pegmatitic, metamorphic, hydrothermal, and weathering. As part of this construct, the Halls introduce a concept that has developed over the past 15 years: mineral evolution.
Recognizing that there were no minerals at all for hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, the concept explains how our planet today came to host more than 5,500 mineral species. The process
began with supernovae infusing the universe with more and heavier elements, which could combine into minerals. The formation of planets enabled the differentiation of these minerals, mostly in the form of molten rocks heading to the surface. On Earth, as new mineral-forming environments arose—with the accumulation of liquid water, for example, or the introduction of free oxygen into the atmosphere by the first photosynthetic organisms—minerals diversified in color, texture, and chemical composition. Organisms contain, produce, and use minerals, and new minerals have formed because of life. (See release on science in the Halls).
“When I started at the Museum, there were probably 2,500 minerals described—and now there are more than 5,500 minerals,” said George E. Harlow. “The enhanced Halls present up-to-date science, which has progressed significantly. I look forward to seeing visitors delight in remarkable gems and mineral specimens from across the globe and our own backyard, like those in the Minerals of New York City display featuring specimens from all five boroughs.”
Hall Highlights
The redesigned Halls feature more than 5,000 specimens sourced from 98 countries. In addition to those already mentioned, highlights include:
the Singing Stone, a massive block of vibrant blue azurite and green malachite from Arizona, first exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a wall-sized panel of fluorescent rock that glows in shades of orange and green, sourced from Sterling Hill in New Jersey, The Butterfly of Peace, 240 colored diamonds arranged in a symmetrical pattern of similar cuts and colors, A nearly 600-pound specimen of topaz from Minas Gerais, Brazil, one of the largest single crystals of topaz in any museum in the world, an ancient block of orbicular granite featuring unusual ball-shaped, concentric clusters of crystals, sourced from one of Earth’s oldest enduring landmasses, the 2.7-billion-year-old Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia, a spectacular specimen of yellow fluorite retrieved from the Moscona Mine in the Asturias region of northwest Spain, which grew after hot water dissolved layers of limestone, and later deposited cubic crystals coated with glistening pyrite in the empty space, An iridescent block of labradorite from Madagascar made up of large crystals of feldspar that display vibrant colors with changes in viewing angle, a slab of amphibolite rock containing huge almandine garnet crystals that formed more than a billion years ago, sourced from Gore Mountain in upstate New York, a 1.8-billion-year-old assemblage of dravite tourmaline crystals, one of the oldest pieces in the Hall, which formed in present-day Western Australia in solid metamorphic rock, a massive 5-foot beryl crystal section, sourced from the Bumpus Quarry in Albany, Maine, And weighing almost half a ton and showcasing hundreds of swordlike crystals, one of the largest stibnite specimens on public display, from southeastern China.
Beautiful Creatures Inaugural Temporary Exhibition
Inaugurating the Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery, the first temporary exhibition space to be built in any of the Museum’s permanent halls, the American Museum of Natural History will present Beautiful Creatures. Featuring some of the world’s most spectacular jewelry pieces inspired by animal forms and curated by jewelry historian Marion Fasel, the special exhibition will be on view through September 19, 2021.
“Beautiful Creatures is devoted to animal-themed jewelry designs created over the last 150 years,” said Marion Fasel. “The timeframe dovetails with the founding of the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1869. The institution, and others like it around the world, actively contributed to the public’s exposure to and subsequent fascination with the study and science of nature, particularly the animal kingdom, which, in all its remarkable diversity, has promised never to lose its allure for jewelry designers.”
Beautiful Creatures features imaginative designs by the world’s great jewelry houses and artisans—from Cartier’s iconic panthers to Suzanne Belperron’s butterflies. The sparkling pieces on view range in date from the mid-19th century to the present, and displays are arranged into categories of animals observed in the air, water, and on land.
Exhibition Design
The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals are designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates with Davis Brody Bond as architects, together with the American Museum of Natural History’s award-winning Exhibition Department under the direction of Lauri Halderman, vice president for exhibition.
The three main divisions of the layout are the Gem Hall, the Mineral Hall, and the Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery for temporary exhibitions.
The Gem Hall includes a display of nearly 2,500 objects from the Museum’s world-class collection. These include precious stones, carvings, and stunning jewelry from around the world that were fashioned from naturally beautiful minerals. In addition to the Star of India sapphire and the Patricia Emerald, specimens on view will include the DeLong Star Ruby, a 100.3-carat ruby from Myanmar; the Brazilian Princess topaz, a 221-facet, 9.5-pound pale blue topaz that once was the largest cut gem in the world; and a carving of the Buddhist deity Guan Yin in lavender jadeite jade, fashioned in China during the late Qing Dynasty.
The Mineral Hall comprises four sections. Mineral Forming Environments is a set of cases in the center of the Hall dedicated to the environments and processes by which minerals form: igneous, pegmatitic, metamorphic, hydrothermal, and weathering. At the four corners, Mineral Fundamentals displays explore the overarching concepts of mineral sciences, from the evolution and diversification of minerals to their properties to how they have been used by humans from prehistory to the present day. Systematic Classification, a display running along the west wall, contains 659 specimens that represent the chemical classification system that scientists use to organize Earth’s more than 5,500 mineral species, as well as an interactive feature in which visitors can explore forming minerals from the elements on the periodic table. Finally, Minerals & Light, a room off the east wall, explores the optical properties of minerals—their interaction with light.
A state-of-the-art lighting system throughout the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals uses cool and warm full-spectrum LEDs and sophisticated lighting controls to reveal the rich texture, color, and reflectivity of the diverse objects on display. Additionally, short- and long-wave ultraviolet sources are utilized to reveal spectacular colors in fluorescent minerals. Visitors will experience the incredible depth and character of the striking minerals and gems on display in a calibrated, dramatic lighting environment.
Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Museum
The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals are a striking complement to the David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth and the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites. The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth illustrates the evolution and inner workings of our dynamic planet with outstanding geological specimens and interactive exhibits on climate change, while the Hayden Planetarium educates visitors about the latest space science through immersive presentations such as the Museum’s new Space Show Worlds Beyond Earth. The Ross Hall of Meteorites—which is immediately adjacent to the Mignone Halls—explores the origins of our solar system through holdings from the Museum’s world-class collection of meteorites, which contain some of the same minerals found on Earth.
This public-facing work is overseen by curators in the Museum’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, who conduct research in the fields of mineralogy, petrology, geochemistry, ocean science, and cosmochemistry. The department’s researchers study topics that include the origin of rubies in Southeast Asia; using corals to reveal how our oceans have changed over time; and the mineral and chemical origins of solar systems, especially the transformation of interstellar minerals into the building blocks of asteroids, comets, and meteorites. The collections of the department, which include minerals, gems, and meteorites, hold more than 120,000 specimens.
The Mignone Halls as an Educational Resource
The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals were designed as a vital educational resource for school and camp groups, educators, and students of all ages to learn about the mineral sciences of our dynamic planet. The reimagined Halls were developed to support New York State and national science education standards, which recognize the interdisciplinary nature of evidence-based science. The scientific disciplines manifested through the Halls’ exhibits include Earth science (with content about how minerals form), chemistry (including an interactive periodic table), physics (with a gallery focused on the interaction between light and minerals), biology (including the role of life in the evolution and abundance of Earth’s minerals), and more.
These Halls play a key role in the Museum’s Masters of Art in Teaching program, which prepares highly qualified Earth science teachers for grades 7-12 in high-needs schools in New York City and throughout the State. Participants in the program utilize the Halls throughout their instruction and tap into them as a tangible teaching tool for their own classes upon graduation. Since the MAT program launched in 2012, 124 MAT teachers have graduated from the program and teach thousands of students each year.
American Museum of Natural History 150th Anniversary Projects
The Halls have undergone renovation as part of the physical and programmatic initiatives undertaken in conjunction with the 150th anniversary celebration of the Museum, which was founded in 1869.
These projects will culminate in the opening of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, a major new facility, designed by Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang. The spectacular, 230,000-square-foot facility will add exhibition galleries, state-of-the-art classrooms, an immersive theater, and a redesigned library, revealing more of the Museum’s scientific collections and linking 10 Museum buildings to improve visitor flow throughout the campus. The section of the Museum that houses the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals had long been a cul-de-sac, which could be entered and exited only from the south end. In the future, the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals will be linked to the new Gilder Center, allowing visitors to circulate with greater ease and less congestion.
The Museum is also working on updating, restoring, and conserving the Northwest Coast Hall to enrich the interpretation of the gallery’s exhibits.
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