Finally, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in partnership with Teck Corporation, the large, Canadian mining company, has opened the Teck Suite of Galleries: Earth's Treasures. The "Suite" of galleries includes the Vale-Inco Limited Gallery of Minerals, the Gallery of Gems and Gold plus, eventually, the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. The Gallery of Minerals was opened in late December and was an excellent Christmas present for all mineral collectors that visit Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the future.
The Gallery contains about 2,300 well displayed mineral specimens. The specimens are grouped several ways. There are a number of locality groupings such as Mont Saint Hilaire, Jeffrey Mine, Bisbee, Arizona, Keweenaw Peninsula, Yukon Phosphates, Cobalt, Ontario, etc. As well, there are cases or parts of cases devoted to crystal forms, twinning, uses of minerals, colour in minerals, meteorites, etc. All of these cases are well done! A systematic collection takes up much of the floor-space and contains many fine, beatiful and rare minerals. The Gallery contains only a fraction of the ROM's 100,000+ specimens but it is a start! The specimens are simply labelled with the name of the mineral. Touch-screen monitors flank each case and you can quickly determine locality and other information about the specimen that you are particularly interested in.
The Gold and Gem Gallery currently contains an exhibit of gems, gem minerals and jewellry called Light and Stone: Gems from the Collection of Michael Scott, co-founder of Apple Computers. This private collection has few equals, in the world, outside of a few royal families! It will be on display for the next year.
If you are a mineral collector and plan to visit Toronto, in the future, you MUST plan ahead to reserve a day to visit the ROM and the Teck Suite of Galleries: Earth's treasures. Her ea re a few images of the Gala openning and specimens that you can view at the ROM.
What a cerussite twin from Tsumeb! The long member of the twinned aggregate is about 15.ocm long.
I lusted over this wonderful Chibougamau Mine cubanite specimen during the time that it was in Rob Woodside's collection. Now it is on permanent display for all to lust over at the ROM. The crystal is about 3.5cm across.
Yours truly, David K. Joyce with Malcolm Back of the Royal Ontario Museum. Malcolm has put much of himself into the Gallery and has been very involved with the discussions, meetings, decisions and long hours over the past few years! It was a great evening.
Dr. Fred Wicks and Dr. Bob Gait, former curators of the ROM contemplate the gallery in the contect of their experience with past galleries and exhibits.
There are some great Jeffrey Mine pieces on display at the ROM. The large specimen is about 25cm across! Gorgeous!
A Rogues Gallery, lusting over many of the specimens on display, L-R, Ray Hill, David K. Joyce, Dr. Rob Woodside and Frank Melanson
Kim Tait, the proud Curator of Mineralogy at the ROM, was delighted at the turnout for the Gala Opening of the Teck Suite of Galleries: Earths Treasures. Kim and her staff have worked many hard hours, nights and days readying the Gallery over the past few years. That is Ian Nicklin of the ROM, on the left.
A couple of superlative Brazilian morganite specimens. The 12cm crystal on the left has long been one of my favourites. The one on the right has the morganite crystals kind of stacked up in an amazing, teetering cluster on the quartz crystal.
The lazulites on the left are pretty good but the kulanite specimen from Rapid Creek on the right is AMAZING! That piece is about 14.0cm across!
There are some great sulphosalt specimens on display at the new Gallery. This 6.0cm cluster of polybasite crystals from the Husky Mine, Yukon, is a killer!
Here is a close-up of that 12cm wide serandite twin crystal. It is something!
I guess we should have expected there would be some classics on display such as these two magnificant serandite specimens. The twin on the upper left is about 12cm in width.
There are bigger specimens of native bismuth on display in the Gallery but I thought this 7.0cm wide piece was sweet! It is a calcite vein with a core of bright native bismuth from Cobalt, Ontario.
This is one of the more gorgeous specimens in the exhibit (in my humble opinion). Most of the calcite crystals on this specimen are heavily copper included but the one, gem-like, clear, colourless crystals is perfectly presented in the middle of the 17.0cm wide cluster. Excellent! I'm sure that the A.E. Seaman Museum would LOVE to repatriate this one!
A superb specimen of this unusual sulphosalt from Kazakhstan. About 6.0cm wide.
This is one of my personal favourites. This specimen is about 30.0cm across and is a perfect cluster of pinacoid-terminated scalenohedra coated with lustrous goethite. A wonderful old Faraday Mine, Bancroft, Ontario specimen!
A very nice8.0cm high millerite from an unlikely location: the Kerr Addisson Gold Mine at Larder Lake, Ontario.
A superb 24.0cm specimen of wulfenite from the Glove Mine, Arizona.
