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Rocks have always been in the foundation of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. John Campion’s crystallized gold was one of the first collections on display when the museum opened 125 years ago. Since then, the museum has expanded more than a dozen times at its current City Park location, hosting crowd-pleasing temporary exhibits as well as adding permanent displays. The Coors Hall of Gems & Minerals has been a particularly popular attraction — visited by nearly half of all museum guests, according to recent exit interviews collected by DMNS — since it opened in 1982.
But soon, all those specimens will be carefully removed from their cases, cleaned, digitized and put into storage — a three-month process that’s only the beginning of a $30 million facelift for the exhibition space and the display. The Coors Hall of Gems & Minerals will close on Wednesday, April 15, and is projected to reopen in late 2027 as the Dea Family Gems & Minerals Hall, after Cathy and Peter Dea, longtime museum supporters who contributed the lead gift for the project, which is being privately funded by the community and philanthropic partners…