The Royal Cornwall Museum’s mineral exhibition opens after a £476,000 refurbishment

A mineral exhibition containing thousands of samples has reopened to the public after a makeover costing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As part of the refurbishment, the Mineral Gallery at the Royal Cornwall Museum has new exhibits, a high-tech video display and a new lighting system.

There are 12,000 mineral samples in the collection, which bosses say provides a unique insight into Cornish mining history.

Staff at the Truro museum said they were “delighted” with the new display.

The gallery has been closed since January for a £476,000 refurbishment.

Chair of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, the charity behind the museum, Julie Caplin Gray, said it was vital they made the collection more accessible to all people.

“If you’re a geologist, you love them because they’re minerals, and they’re actually very beautiful, so you can enjoy them for their beauty,” she said.

“But there’s something about what we’re trying to do with interpretation, which is to connect the dots to how they’re relevant now, whether it’s the cell phone or the car battery, there’s that kind of connectivity.

“We need to tell that story because it is the story of Cornwall, past and present.”

The project’s transformation lead, Jackie George, said they wanted to “make the museum more inclusive and open to a wider range of people”.

The museum’s artistic director, Bryony Robins, said: “The (collection) looked a bit tired, a bit dusty, a bit old-fashioned, but the collection there is so interesting, it just had to be brought to life.”

Money for the work came from Town Deal Funding.

Truro Town Deal board chairman Alan Stanhope said: “The opening of the Mineral Gallery is the first Truro Town Deal project to reach completion, which is an exciting milestone for our investment programme.”