From the Museu de Ciência e Técnica da Escola de Minas (Brazil) to the Smithsonian Institution (USA) and the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Austria), many encyclopedic and natural history museums are known for their significant collections of mineral specimens.
Despite their continuing popularity, however, mineral collections are relatively absent in critical museum scholarship, especially decolonial or environmental museology. Such omissions, including that of colonial narratives from mineral displays, are ‘not accidental’, write geologist Selby Hearth and curator Carrie Robbins (2022: 4). Rather, this silence ‘reflects a corresponding absence within the geological community’ (Hearth and Robbins 2022: 4).
Ranging from conceptual explorations of mineral cataloguing to reflections on reclaimed biocultural heritage, the papers gathered in this issue suggest productive pathways for scholars and practitioners to attend to the social, political, and environmental qualities of museum minerals.
This rich issue, published by Leicester University, shows, for example, the invisible mineworkers who collected the rock, mineral and fossil specimens of John Woodward or explores how the mineral specimens held by the Science and Technology department at National Museums Scotland were brought together.
