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The New Bruce to Sparkle with the Robert R. Wiener Mineral Gallery

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By Anne W. Semmes

Robert R. Wiener is fascinated by “the beauty, the structure, the colors, and the rarity” of minerals. That life-long passion has built one of the world’s great collections of minerals, of which some 100 of the finest specimens will be on permanent display in the Robert R. Wiener Gallery to debut with the redoubling of the Bruce Museum.

Caption Robert R. Wiener is funding the New Bruce mineral gallery with a hundred of the “finest specimens” to be on permanent display.

“I’ve given the Museum some spectacular pieces – and I’ve made a half-million-dollar commitment to the Campaign for the New Bruce to ensure that the new mineral gallery excites everybody who visits,” says Wiener, chairman of MAXX Properties, a fourth-generation, family-owned real estate company based in Harrison, N.Y. “It’s a new day for the Bruce Museum and for the Town of Greenwich, and we should all celebrate that there are enough people who care to help create a new center of life and light.”

Wiener cites the design of the New Bruce addition as “marrying the landscape with the new building, and the rising and falling of the sun with the shadows they’ll create and the light they’ll bring in.” He sees his new mineral gallery well situated within the reimagined and dramatically enlarged Science Galleries, which will occupy the whole of the exhibition space in the original building. “I’m looking forward to seeing my minerals on display with the right lighting.”

“People ask me where these minerals come from – most of them come from caves and have to be cut out with diamond-studded saws,” Wiener explains. “To me they represent an amazing form of beauty – the author, the creator, the inventor, the sculptor has to be a higher power. And many people believe that when you get close to certain minerals, there’s a force that gets inside you and brings you good luck.”

“I hope the minerals will sparkle in children’s eyes,” he continues, “and create an enthusiasm for learning more about geology, and all the other wonderful things that will come to them as they did to me by getting into the science of the earth. And that makes me very happy to think that will happen.”

A pair of amethyst ‘wings’ on view in the Museum’s permanent science gallery was gifted to the Bruce Museum by Robert R. Wiener.

Supporting the Campaign for the New Bruce and serving as Honorary Bruce Trustee has brought to Wiener “a sense of contribution to the community. Our giving will expand the horizons of many children and adults. The Bruce will have a much greater capacity to handle many more people and draw them from many more areas.”

“My passion is for the people who are creating the New Bruce,” notes Wiener, “and for their excitement about creating a cultural institution at a much higher level than it’s been. I’m excited for it, and having met the new Executive Director, Robert Wolterstorff, I think the sky’s the limit.”

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