Exhibitions
The Rice is home to fascinating and beautiful galleries and displays that showcase the beauty and variety of geologic wonders, such as Northwest thundereggs, agate, jasper, sunstones, and a vast collection of rocks and minerals from around the world.
Special Exhibitions are available for a limited time. Exhibits listed as “Always On View” are always available!
Special Exhibition:
Cellphone: Unseen Connections
Cellphone: Unseen Connections, a Smithsonian-developed DIY poster exhibition based on the exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History, explores the hidden world inside your smartphone. This display reveals the surprising role of rocks and minerals in the devices we use every day—the average cellphone contains 65 elements.
Our museum’s presentation highlights the minerals essential to cellphone technology, connecting Earth’s natural resources to modern innovation. Come discover how the building blocks of our planet make our digital lives possible.
Always On View
Main Gallery
The Museum’s main gallery, located on the lower level, contains one of the world’s finest collections of crystals. Over 4,000 individual specimens are on view from a working collection of over 20,000. See the famous Alma Rose rhodochrosite from Colorado, and rare and unusual minerals such as benitoite, paravauxite, legrandite, papagoite, and many others.
Link will open Google Arts & Culture pageDennis & Mary Murphy Gallery
The petrified wood collection on display contains over 460 worldwide specimens collected by Dennis and Mary Murphy over 40 years. The variety of colors, species, and localities make this among the nation’s finest. On view are cross-cut slices, full rounds, and tall tree trunks of petrified wood.
Link will open Google Arts & Culture pageNorthwest Gallery
Visit the Rudy Tschernich Northwest Mineral Gallery, where the Pacific Northwest mineral heritage is preserved. The gallery features the Tschernich zeolite collection, a large section of thundereggs (Oregon’s State Rock), and sunstones (Oregon’s State Gemstone). Enjoy the best from the Northwest, including the largest “opal-filled” thunderegg in the world.
Link will open Google Arts & Culture pageRainbow Gallery
Our Rainbow Gallery is filled with natural minerals that emit brilliant colors when energized with ultraviolet black light. This gallery is always one of the favorite sights to see at the museum. Watch as both shortwave and longwave fluorescent lighting is used to reveal bright, beautiful colors demonstrating that raw minerals can look normal in daylight and have a magical glow underneath UV light.
Fossil Gallery
The Fossil Gallery is full of mysterious things from the distant past. Learn about fossils and trace fossils, dinosaur eggs, and see prehistoric relics of land, air and, sea creatures from the Northwest and around the globe, including Tucker, a three-dimensional baby psittacosaurus.
Link will open Google Arts & Culture page