I've mentioned before the Eric and I both like space stuff (we met at an aerospace company), and we like going to various space or aviation themed museums. Both of us have rock collections as well, so when we found out that TCU has a meteorite gallery, we wanted to check it out. Since it's in Fort Worth, we just stopped by campus after going to the Botanic Gardens (and grabbing lunch).
The Monnig Meteorite Gallery is housed in the Sid W. Richardson building at TCU. The building itself is easy to find, but getting into the gallery was unnecessarily hard. There were no obvious doors near this sign, and we spent several minutes trying other doors that were all locked. Eventually a student was located and we followed him up a ramp and into a door, where there was a small sign telling us the museum was this way.
Once inside, the gallery itself is hard to miss :) There was a graduate student across from the sign here who asked us to please sign in, which we did before entering.
Outside the gallery is a big display case with interesting information and lots of rocks. It is definitely worth reading the signs here.
My favorite text from the whole exhibit - meteorite vs meteorwrong.
There were no photos allowed inside the gallery (for reasons unclear), but it was a really interesting exhibit and worth checking out if you are into space stuff or geology at all.
By the entrance are real meteorites that you are encouraged to touch. (There are a few please-touch exhibits within the gallery, too.) It feels like a normal rock, except the knowledge that it's from space (and really old) makes it super cool.
The icing on the cake was after the exhibit we were just hanging around in the lobby area when an older professor-looking-type overheard us talking about the gallery. It turned out to be Dr. Arthur J. Ehlmann, the curator of the museum, who started at TCU in 1958. He took us back to his office, where he gave us a personal lecture on meteorites, described some of his geology career, and we got to hold meteorites (heavy!) and see the etched patterns on slices up close. It was awesome.
Fort Worth, TX: Monnig Meteorite Gallery
Reviewed by Maria
on
10:00:00 AM
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