The Hope Diamond - Exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History Back on Permanent Display As Of Jul 1, 2016 (Open Weekends From Now Until Then)

[DonRocks]

For those of you wanting to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - in particular, to see the Hope Diamond - there is some important information at this webpage:

Dec 17, 2015 - "Hope Diamond Will Be Temporarily Off Display During Renovation" on newsdesk.si.edu

Between now and June 30, 2016, the gallery (the newly renovated Harry Winston Gallery) is only open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays while renovations are being completed.

Beginning July 1, 2016, it will be open on a permanent basis.

While the Hope Diamond is beautiful, worth seeing, and one of the most famous diamonds in the world, I've never taken a visitor to the "gems and minerals" section of the museum when they haven't liked *something* - be it a ruby, or a piece of quartz, or meteorite - that they didn't like more than the Hope Diamond. The response is always something like, "Yeah, the Hope Diamond was great, but the <X> was *absolutely incredible*!" and <X> can be any of a dozen different things *just in that one section of the museum*.

My hope is that the refurbished Harry Winston Gallery will play up the intrigue behind the diamond instead of the diamond itself, because the actual gem is (in my opinion) surpassed by numerous specimens in that area. Anyway, it's worth going out of your way to see.

[The Hersch]

It might be noted that the Hope Diamond was probably the gem Arthur Conan Doyle had in mind when he wrote the Sherlock Holmes tale "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", although diamonds are not carbuncles, and carbuncles are never blue.