Gallery Reviews

摘要

I am writing in regards to John White's reviews of different museums around the world. I have not had the opportunity to visit the museums he has critiqued, but I must say a picture is worth a thousand words. I have had the opportunity to work with two different museums that I have not seen critiqued in his reviews (they are not in the same class of museum as the ones he critiques). They are the University of Utah's Museum of Natural History and Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology's Mineral Museum in Butte, Montana. I think the main problem with them, and with most museums, is that they don't have anyone working there who understands the difference between a "good" mineral specimen and an "exceptional" mineral specimen. Consequently the specimens in the collection which they can draw on for display pieces are just pretty rocks to them. Both of these museums have many of then-best specimens in storage, where they are seen once every decade, maybe, by someone who works there and is curious enough to go looking through storage boxes. I know because I went snooping through boxes that had been sealed for nearly 100 years! (I didn't even know Butte had world-class rhodochrosites, tetrahedrites and chalcopy-rites, and 3-inch covellite crystals!). I have seen some of the best specimens from Butte, with handwritten labels from prominent Butte mineral kings collected in the peak of mining.