Museum making upgrades

Don't think the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum is gathering dust during its coronavirus-mandated closing.

Museum director Loni Monahan and Axel Hungerbuehler, its curator and a natural sciences faculty member at the college, have been busy during the museum's down time making overdue upgrades, including a new display of 350 rare or colorful minerals from a renowned collector.

"We had the opportunity to paint all the public spaces for the first time in 20 years," Monahan said in her office last week. "We moved the shelving around, put up new inventory, gave a complete face-lift to the gift shop. We not only put in the mineral display, but we're putting in a college-project display that's very exciting.

"This is a brand-new place," she added. "I hope people come back to see it when we reopen."

The museum has been closed for weeks because of the pandemic. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's emergency health order is set to expire May 15, but whether the museum will reopen at that time remains unknown.

In the meantime, improvements to the facility at 222 E. Laughlin Ave. continue.

Monahan said repainting the museum's interior took about 10 days.

"The closing actually has been a blessing. Since we're closed to the public only on Sundays and Mondays, we couldn't have done it," she said. "We were disappointed our staff had to leave, but Axel and I have come in here every day to get the new projects done."

Hungerbuehler said the collection of minerals comes from Iowa State University engineering professor Howard Shanks, a rock hound who amassed a huge inventory over a half-century of buying and trading.

Hungerbuehler said he typically chatted with Shanks during the annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in Arizona. Museum representatives typically went to the event to buy specimens for its gift shop and collections.

One year, Shanks told Hungerbuehler he'd tried to donate his collection to Iowa State or the U.S. Geological Survey, but both turned him down.

"We told him, 'If you really want a home for your collection, we might have a solution for that problem,'" Hungerbuehler recalled.

Shanks willed the collection to Mesalands after his death in 2009. The minerals were in Hungerbuehler's classroom for years but not open to the public.

"We decided it was good enough to show to everybody," he said. "We've tried to display specimens that are particularly attractive. Some of them are hard to get and fairly rare. It's an overview of what we have in the collection."

Monahan acknowledged she prodded her colleague a bit to display part of the Shanks collection, which had been on the museum's to-do list for years. She understood Hungerbuehler's initial reluctance.

"It was a huge task to undertake," she said. "We had to identify every single one and make identification cards for every single one, taking them out of the cabinets, moving the cabinets, putting them back in, putting in the ID cards, cleaning everything ... it was well worth it."

She said the new display took several weeks to accomplish.

"Once he got going and saw how his hard work was going to pay off, I think he's very pleased to have it in the public eye," Monahan said.

Hungerbuehler said the 350 minerals on public display are only a fraction of the Shanks collection.

"I cannot tell you for certain how many specimens we're talking about," he said. "We're talking thousands ... probably in the five-digit number. We have about 4,000 mineral specimens alone that were selected to stay in our collection; many more are duplicates we don't really need."

He said Shanks' will allows the museum to sell specimens if the funds benefit education and the museum.

Monahan said the dinosaur museum was enjoying a 40% increase in revenue - mainly because of a new set of billboards on Interstate 40 - before the coronavirus hit and shut it down. She's now expecting only a break-even year.

She holds other plans for the museum. She wants to add a children's corner as part of a weekly reading hour for local kids.

Monahan plans to bring in virtual-reality glasses for visitors. One will give people the experience of being in a dinosaur rainforest or being underwater with prehistoric amphibians.

A second pair of virtual-reality glasses will take viewers to digs at the college's dinosaur excavation site in southern Quay County. A film crew will shoot footage at the next dinosaur dig for that project.