The Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s

An experienced museum leader, Joel A. Bartsch serves as president and CEO of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, a position he has held since 2004. That year, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History recognized Joel Bartsch with its Carnegie Medal for outstanding contributions to the field of mineralogy. The Carnegie Museum is widely known for having one of the best minerology collections in the world.

The museum’s first minerology exhibit showcased the personal collection of Professor Gustave Guttenberg, comprising 550 minerals. After his death in 1897, the museum purchased the pieces, and they became the permanent core. In its early years, the collection grew primarily through gifts, which included major pieces like a pseudomorph of hemimorphite after calcite from Joplin, Missouri. Many of these gifts came from Andrew Carnegie himself.

One of the largest early additions was the collection of William W. Jefferis, which Carnegie purchased. This collection included calcite, fluorite, and barite from Europe. The museum also received many gifts from Norman Spang, including a perfectly terminated quartz crystal weighing 75 pounds, and the entire collection of Dr. M. E. Wadsworth, dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Mines.