The Mineral Exhibit

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

If you visit this page occasionally and have been wondering about when the next blog post would be forthcoming, well, I had been wondering that too. I have begun new posts several times, but in each instance my focus has been pulled away by the same all-consuming activity: my time has been taken up by the completion of a mineral exhibit. This past week, we finally did the installation, so I thought I had might as well set those posts-in-progress aside yet again. Here, instead, are some photos of the exhibit.

At the Museum we had long recognized that a mineral exhibit was one of the features most lacking in the Earth History Gallery. Minerals are the basic building blocks of rocks and other geological materials, we have a great diversity of minerals in this province’s rocks, and of course minerals are often beautiful objects that are treasured by many collectors.

For the past several years we have been collaborating with the Mineral Society of Manitoba to acquire specimens suitable for exhibit, and The Manitoba Museum Foundation and the Canadian Geological Foundation had kindly provided us with funding to construct cases. This exhibit is at the front end of the Earth History Gallery, where we only had space for a couple of cases, and the number of specimens and volume of text were quite limited, so this should have been a simple little exhibit project, no?

Stephanie Whitehouse, our designer, wanted to try working more with metal and glass on this case, and she asked the workshop to look at ways plexiglas could be prepared to allow it to glow. Bert Valentin considered new lighting options (though he eventually settled on fibre optics similar to those in the Ancient Seas cases) and Marc Hébert had to develop new techniques to build cases using different construction materials. Lisa May and Wayne Switek constructed specimen mounts that look simple but had to hold the specimens just so. And once all the pieces were constructed, it still took the team most of last week to assemble them and make everything fit. Dealing with the giant amethyst (now informally rechristened The Mammothist) was a big piece of this process, so big that I will give it its own post in the near future!

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

The Manitoba Museum is home to many unusual and unique specimens. Among the most remarkable is the world’s largest complete trilobite, the holotype specimen of the species Isotelus rex. Over the years we have occasionally received requests from other museums for replicas of this striking fossil.

More than a decade ago, before the specimen ever went on exhibit, we had a mould prepared by an outside contractor who also made a number of resin replicas. These were on the shelf and ready to be painted if an order arrived. But eventually those replicas ran out, and when a new order came in from a museum in Japan last year, it was discovered that the original mould was too old and worn to be used again. A new mould was needed, which meant that we would have to remove the specimen from its exhibit in the Earth History Gallery.

So we pulled out the case, carefully slid out the fossil (this is tricky, because it weighs about as much as I do!), and wheeled it away to the artists’ studio to be worked on by Debbie Thompson and Betsy Thorsteinson. While the specimen was “on leave” from the exhibit, it was temporarily replaced by one of the existing replicas.

The following photos are Betsy’s documentation of the complex and fascinating replication process. Our artists are tremendously skilled, as indicated by the high quality of work in so many of our galleries, and by the attention to detail in the preparation of these perfect trilobite replicas.

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

Ed Dobrzanski is a “fixture” at the Museum. He had been a volunteer here before I started back in in 1993, and he has volunteered continuously for the past 20 years. Ed has done tremendous work as an amateur paleontologist, collecting, preparing, studying, identifying, and cataloguing fossils. He has contributed to paleontological field and laboratory work in a great variety of ways. For his all-round efforts, many of us are delighted that Ed has just been named as the recipient of the Katherine Palmer Award, a North America-wide award for amateur paleontologists, presented annually by the Paleontological Research Institution.

An inveterate collector with interests in a great variety of objects, Ed had a long career as a government meteorologist. When staff reductions resulted in an opportunity for early retirement, Ed took advantage of this to turn his volunteer work into a daily avocation. In his time here, Ed has contributed tremendous knowledge to the organization of fossil collections as varied as brachiopods (lamp shells), fishes, and bivalves. He has also donated many specimens to the Museum (and to other institutions such as the Royal Ontario Museum), has contributed to exhibit development and public programs, and assists with all sorts of tasks in other departments of the Museum!

Ed Dobrzanski is a tremendous asset to the science of paleontology in Manitoba and beyond; it is wonderful to see this recognized!

The spaces that house Museum curators and collections are, perhaps, notorious for appearing to be crammed full of objects. Our work consists of collecting and organizing, and actively-collecting Museum scientists typically have many specimens spread out for study and cataloguing. Our collections rooms contain many thousands of well-organized specimens, but it is tricky to find space for the largest pieces. For this reason, some of our biggest specimens are not stored in the official Natural History storage: ever since I have worked at the Museum, most of our large mammal mounts have been in alcoves along the hallways here. If I wish to, I could say “good morning” to two muskoxen, a grizzly bear, and two mule deer just in the short space between the elevator and my office!

It used to be that, when the elevator stopped at our floor, those inside would glance out to see our creatures, safe in their protective plastic cocoons. Although this may be an interesting sight (if you know what they are), it is hardly a fitting introduction to the great variety of activities here, and it made it look rather like a warehouse. A few years ago, we decided to remedy this; when an old display case came available in the Museum basement, we grabbed it and placed it facing the elevator to house an introductory exhibit.

This display has taken years to develop, because we were always getting sidetracked with our real work! We placed a few items into the case right after we moved it, but then it sat untended for some time. Returning to the case a couple of years ago, we added a lot of interesting pieces and planned to include a title explaining what it was about, but again we of course became busy with projects such as the Biodiversity and Colours in Nature exhibits. Then, this past week, we finally managed to “finish” this display, at least for the moment, adding a title panel and several of the wonderful Haeckel posters that had been included in the Biodiversity exhibit.

What is the purpose of this case, and why have we decided to feature the particular items that are in there? As well as providing “eye candy” for those who happen to see it from the elevator on their way to other floors, we wanted the case to introduce the basic research and collecting disciplines that occupy this floor: Zoology, Botany, and Geology/Paleontology. Since it is not climate-controlled, and is subjected to dust, light, and vibration, all the items in it are robust. They are generally replicas or are from the stores of “teaching grade” objects lacking basic data.

Although the choices were limited, we were pleased that we could include some of our favourite sorts of items (an ichthyosaur replica, a box of fake “dino stones”), and examples of things related to some of the research that takes place here (Tyndall Stone fossils, snake skin). Undoubtedly the display will continue to evolve in the coming years as we come upon other suitable exhibits for it!