Getting ready for some butterflies!

A week ago, we received Buzz & Bernardine's butterfly brooch collection for a 1-year loan. The exhibit will open May 1st 2012! Bernardine and her daughter brought us the 16 butterflies, including 3 new additions: a tanzanite butterfly, a Nevada opal butterfly, and a benitoite and spessartine butterfly. All the jewelry, designed by Bernardine, is made out of rare gemstones that were in Buzz & Bernardine's collection. Buzz is a talented gem cutter (he cut the main gems of the butterflies), who used to own the benitoite mine, in San Benito County, California (mine that is now closed).
We were all so excited to receive the butterflies! Since then, we had a lot of "wow" and "oh my god" going on in our secured room... Everyone has his favorite! Here is the spread of butterflies (they look so much better in person, these pictures have been taken quickly with a point and shoot camera...):

After the initial excitement, we had to figure out the best way to mount and display them. Our choice is now done: they will be displayed in the 5 show cases at the entrance of the Gem Vault. Now... how to mount them? Tony's 35 year-expertise bluffed me! He found the perfect mounts and way to hang the butterflies in a few minutes.

And here we are, mounting the precious butterflies, carefully, one after the other. While I am finishing up mounting the butterflies, Tony is creating the labels.

Alright, I think we've got them all!

A quick try at night in the exhibit: they looked ASBOLUTELY GORGEOUS! Nothing compared to when they are just laying flat on the table. 

What else to do then? Advertise our temporary display! Making some posters to put around the museum, contacting the media people of the museum, updating our facebook page, and inviting our colleagues to come over and have a behind the scene tour.

Also, as our labels on the exhibit don't allow us to have much information about the butterflies, Alyssa and I decided to create a webpage for them, describing each butterfly and the rare gemstones they are made of.  So, to know more about the butterflies, check out this webpage: www.nhm.org/butterfly

We hope you will enjoy just as much as we are!

California gemstones: spessartine and benitoite butterfly brooch. Photo credit: Edgar Chamorro, NHMLAcouty.