Behind The Scenes Tour Of Our Smith Gem Vault The dazzling facts about the gemstones and the jewelry will be shared by Museum geologists and lapidary artists, including Jill Moffit who worked on one of the stones. This tour will include a demonstration of gemstone cutting. Tuesday, June 19, 2018 – 6:00 PM Public […]
Lecture – The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester Revered “New York Times” bestselling author Simon Winchester will trace the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement–precision–in a history that is both an homage and a warning for […]
Our buyers head to Tucson, Arizona every year in late January early February to handpick minerals and fossils to add to our inventory. Searching for just the right items for our store at the largest, oldest and most prestigious gem and mineral show in the world, the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show. Vendors […]
Cultural Feast – A Renaissance Condottieri Banquet…A Knight to Remember Art, warfare, intrigue, and cuisine often melded during the Italian Renaissance. Places such as Milan and northern Italy were important centers for the manufacture of the exquisite armor worn by kings and nobles throughout Europe during battles. Artists including Leonardo da Vinci often designed fortifications […]
Did you know that corundum is exactly half of everything you could ever want in a gemstone? The “big four” gemstones in the jewelry industry are diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald. Both ruby and sapphire are varieties of corundum, so although you may have never heard of it, the mineral we are discussing today […]
Trains Over Texas Departing from the station January 7, 2018! All Aboard! Create holiday memories by travelling across Texas by model railroad in this scratch built “O” scale model. The multiple trains crisscrossing the state will visit important and unique places in the state’s geology and physiography. Destinations include oil country salt domes, prairies […]
Museum guests who find their way into the Cullen Hall of Gems and Minerals usually have no trouble finding something to be in awe of. Passing through the Hall on my daily rounds, while looking for new hidden gems to spotlight, I rarely make it further than a few feet from the entrance before I […]
Special Exhibition: Sweet – A Tasty Journey Opens May 12th at HMNS At Sugar Land! GET TICKETS Opens May 12, 2017 Unwrap a world of flavorful fun in an interactive and magical setting! Explore the world of all that’s sweet as you learn about candy ingredients from a ‘farm to fork’ perspective. Get the stories […]
This large diamond, responsible for catching the eyes of many patrons in the Cullen Hall of Gems and Minerals was discovered in the late 1970s in Russia and acquired by the museum in 1985. Diamonds were first discovered in Russia during the placer gold mining operations in the Ural Mountains during the late eighteenth century. […]
By Alexander Ruff, HMNS Concierge and Discovery Guide What are minerals? Supplements that you take every morning? In some cases sure. When we think of minerals it usually coincides with vitamins, but for geologists and your everyday rock hounds, minerals have a whole different meaning. As the chain of geology goes, atoms make up molecules, […]
