Following a hostile takeover of the top rated Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum, the AHS destroyed the museum and its popular K-12 education programs. Given this recent AHS assault on Arizona mining history and mineral education, it is quite incredible that someone in the AHS was so insensitive as to prepare the cover for the AHS 2011 annual report shown below. The cover displays the AHS logo, the alchemist’s symbol for copper. The text explains that the AHS adopted it 50 years ago because “copper plays such a prominent role in Arizona’s development.”
The newest and featured gallery in the displaced mineral museum was the Copper Gallery. Tens of thousands of dollars of private donations were pouring in each year to improve this new gallery. When completed, it would have documented and displayed Arizona’s geological, historical, and economic connections to copper like nothing else in the state.
Having destroyed that, and planning to replace it with “smells and vibrations” the AHS now boldly cloaks itself in the historic symbol for copper.
Shameless hypocrisy!
Appendix: Exhibits included in AMMM Copper Gallery plan prior to AHS takeover
Formation of copper deposits
Copper exploration techniques
Maps of Arizona copper deposits
History of copper mining in Arizona
Mining and processing of different ores
Uses for copper in daily life
Beauty and diversity of copper minerals
Applications of copper in art
The Arizona Historical Society is having their annual meeting on Saturday in Tucson. I wonder if their Board of Directors knows what is going on? Do they even care? Has Woosley told them the whole truth?
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