Natural Beauty: The Harold Grinspoon Collection

This exhibit features stunning specimens from the personal collection of Harold Grinspoon — entrepreneur, philanthropist, and passionate collector of rocks, minerals, and petrified wood.

Through Grinspoon’s eye for natural beauty, visitors can marvel at extraordinary forms, colors, and textures shaped by geological forces over millions — or even billions — of years. Among the highlights is a 1,700-pound iron meteorite that landed on Earth 4,500 years ago, offering a rare glimpse of space rock that survived the fiery plunge through our atmosphere.

Other specimens tell stories of dramatic transformation, such as a cross-section of a 300-million-year-old petrified sequoia tree and rock layers formed at the bottom of an ancient sea and later forged into quartzite and schist under immense heat and pressure. See a rock sample from Mount Vesuvius — the volcano that erupted in AD 79 in southern Italy, destroying the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum—and contemplate the wild, often violent, forces that shape our planet.

This collection invites visitors to explore the diversity, beauty, and power of Earth's geology. Uncover the hidden stories in each specimen, and reflect on your personal connection to the natural world.