Bonhams & Butterfields photos Chrysocolla and malachite with cuprite, pieces in the Levi Smith collection being sold by the Warren County School District.

By Marylynne Pitz
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When he wasn't profiting richly from drilling Western Pennsylvania oil wells, Levi Smith purchased eye-popping minerals such as azurite, milky white quartz and malachite.

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Before his death in 1917, the businessman amassed 688 minerals, which he donated to the Warren County School District so students in Pennsylvania's northwestern corner could learn about earth science in a tactile, visual way.

In 1935, the district loaned its mineral collection to Penn State University, which returned it in 2005 because the school no longer wished to store it. Wrapped individually and stowed in 65 copy paper boxes, the minerals will be sold Dec. 3 during a live and online auction conducted by Bonhams & Butterfields in Los Angeles.

"We anticipate revenues of $250,000 to $350,000. This particular collection is very fragile. The stones are small and delicate. They are museum pieces," said Dr. Rob Towsey, the school district's interim superintendent.

Just last month in eastern Pennsylvania, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia sold a major part of a considerably larger mineral collection to a private buyer. The cash-starved museum will use the revenue to operate its 200,000-volume natural science library.

	Crystallized azurite from the Levi Smith collection. Click photo for larger image.

The museum also hopes to win court approval to sell the William S. Vaux collection, which was donated 123 years ago with the understanding that the minerals could never be sold.

Such sales are rare, according to Claudia Florian, an auction house consultant, but also exemplify a shift in collection philosophy at museums nationwide. That's because it is no longer practical or possible for museums to accept large collections unless the donor's gift is wrapped in a substantial endowment of money that will pay for preservation, cataloging, research and storage.

For the Warren County school district, the Levi Smith collection amounts to found money. The businessman placed no restrictions on the collection, so district officials are free to sell it. Headquartered in Warren, which has a population of about 10,000, the 5,500-student school district is spread over 800 square miles.

High school freshmen still study geology in the district, Dr. Towsey said, but for those classes, "We purchase trays of stones and minerals sold by educational suppliers and provide students with examples as to what the minerals are so they can touch them and pass them around."

Seventy years had passed since anyone had seen the minerals so Warren County school officials forgot about them. When Penn State officials phoned to say, "We have 65 boxes of minerals for you," that was the first time in recent history that anybody had heard about the collection. "Penn State took very good care of them," Dr. Towsey added.

The school district will use revenue from the auction to maintain and update its buildings, Dr. Towsey said.

Ms. Florian, a gemologist and consultant to Bonhams & Butterfields, appraised the Levi Smith collection. During the 19th century, the minerals, many of which came from the Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee, Ariz., "weren't considered valuable. Miners would often bring them out in their lunch boxes," she said.

A Colorado mineralogist assembled much of the Levi Smith collection and it was displayed in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Mr. Smith bought it and donated it to the school district.

In today's mineral market, collectors are fueling demand for gorgeous minerals and driving up the prices, too. The Levi Smith collection includes azurite and malachite.

"Azurite is a deep cobalt blue mineral that is ... found in secondary deposits associated with copper mines. An associated mineral to azurite is malachite, which is used more frequently as an ornamental gemstone in carvings," Ms. Florian said.

The sale of the Levi Smith collection is rare, she said, because "most institutions are not permitted to de-accession these collections."

Whether collections are sold publicly or privately, museum professionals realize that simply storing a collection for years does not do anyone much good.

"The academy, except for a five- or six-year period, has not had a mineral curator for 60 years. The collection has not really been cared for," said Ian Davison, the academy's interim president and chief executive officer.

In its sale of minerals last month to a private buyer, both sides agreed to a clause that prohibits museum employees from identifying the buyer, Dr. Davison said.

Under that deal's terms, the buyer must make a good faith effort to offer some suites of minerals to museums in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey because the rocks are from those states, he said.

The Philadelphia museum's mineral collection, consisting of nearly 26,000 specimens, includes a subset of 7,500 rocks acquired by Mr. Vaux, including silver, gold, diamonds and quartz. Despite Mr. Vaux's insistence that the collection never be sold, the museum hopes to obtain the approval of an Orphan's Court judge to sell it.

The academy, which began focusing on biodiversity in the 1950s, is concentrating on biological science instead of earth science, said Dr. Davison, who added that the academy has made other changes to address a series of deficits in recent years.

Such sales are partly driven by museums' need to distinguish themselves and attract more visitors while winnowing the costs of studying, preserving and storing large collections that were amassed and donated in the past century or decades ago.

"Natural history museums across the country are in the same shape as the Academy of Natural Sciences," said Bill DeWalt, director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Oakland.

"We wonder if we will be able to maintain our collections and our scientific work on those collections at the same level that we did in the past. Less than 1 percent of our collections are on view to the public," Dr. DeWalt added.

The natural history museum limits its acquisitions and, in some cases, has given objects to Phipps Conservatory, the Frick Art & Historical Center and the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

Carnegie Museum of Natural History, he added, is acquiring items "in very limited ways. The only things we're actively acquiring are in the gem and mineral area. The good thing is that we have an interested donor who helps out with that. We are acquiring a few casts of dinosaurs to supplement our dinosaurs in their world exhibition."

Hillman Hall of Minerals & Gems, which is part of the natural history museum, will expand by 2,000 square feet, and construction of a new entrance will begin next year.

The idea for creating the hall, which opened in 1980, came from Henry Hillman, local billionaire and philanthropist.

In 1969, Mr. Hillman, who holds a geology degree from Princeton University, noticed a crush of people staring at brilliant clusters of minerals displayed in Kaufmann's Downtown department store windows.

He decided to fund an exhibition that would present minerals in the "manner of sculpture" so that visitors could see their beauty, physical properties and economic uses. The museum holds 23,000 mineral specimens.

But in museums, space truly is the final frontier. In some of its stamp and coin collections, where the natural history museum found it had duplicates, those items were de-accessioned.

"The families of the donors are still upset with us about that," Dr. DeWalt said. "People who donate collections to you do so with the feeling that a museum will care for those things in perpetuity. But there isn't any such thing as perpetuity."

Marc L. Wilson, collections manager, heads the minerals section at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He has spent 14 years recataloging the collection and is still in the As.

"In the 1800s, the mantra was get one of everything from everywhere," he said.

That philosophy is no longer practical, according to Bryan Lees, president of Collector's Edge Inc., a mineral preservation lab in Golden, Colo. His company has preserved museum specimens for the past 30 years, including some for the Carnegie.

The sale of the Philadelphia collection, Mr. Lees said, could be called "a collection rescue. When you love minerals, they are almost as much your friend as a beloved pet would be."

As collectors' interests have changed, museums have evolved, too.

"Back in the 19th century, a lot of museums were gifted things with a lot of strings attached. Fifty years ago, the Philadelphia Academy began changing its focus so it put the collection away," Mr. Lees said.

Today, he said, "Unless you are looking at getting a Hope Diamond or a 'Mona Lisa,' museums will not take gifts into perpetuity because of the cost of care.''

But of course, if private buyers acquire most of the Philadelphia and Levi Smith collections, these things of beauty will wind up being a joy forever to a select few, not the general public.

The Vaux collection, Mr. Lees said, "is probably a snapshot of what people were collecting in the 19th century. He wanted the best he could get."