#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The Norilsk Museum, the Talnah administration and geologists from Nornickel Technical Services will complete work on a large-scale scientific and educational project, GEOpark: Time to Exhibit Stones.
The museum initiative received grant support from the Nornickel company’s charitable program, World of New Opportunities.
GEOpark in Talnah Central Park is a continuation of the city landscape museumification. The beginning was laid by the exhibition, Museum NA-Gora, the improvement of the highest staircase in the city, connecting the center of Talnah and the observation deck of the fifth microdistrict. Now the promising park area has been transformed into an open-air geological museum.
The GEOpark is not just a new city attraction in Talnah, but a real open-air museum exhibition dedicated to the unique underground resources of the territory. Talnah is not called the ore capital for nothing – its deposits have no analogues in the world in terms of volume and diversity of reserves. Thanks to GEOpark, the treasures of Norilsk, previously hidden underground, will now be more accessible to city residents and tourists. For the main exhibition, museum workers together with geologists selected 17 rock samples weighing from 4 to 16 tons from the Nornickel company’s mines and installed them on pedestals. Among the heavyweights there are basalt, anhydrite, limestone, copper and bornite ores, argillite, lava breccia, gabbrodolerites. The Kayerkansky, Angidrit, Octyabrsky, Zapolyarny mines and the Medvezhy Rouchey quarry helped find and deliver the boulders.
The giant exhibits were placed along three conventional routes – according to the main types of local minerals. The GEOpark was built not only with the help of heavy equipment, but also by the efforts of city residents, who searched for and collected beautiful samples of small stones for the park.
The exhibits can be touched, examined, photographed. Each sample is attributed and will be provided with a museum label by the opening day.
The opening of the park will be combined with the Norilsk Museum’s popular annual event EcoNight, which will take place on September 6. Interactive platforms will be open for city residents:
Recognize Minerals by Sight – everyone can bring their collection of minerals or find a stone under their feet, and experienced geologists will teach how to identify them;
Geological Flea Market – you can exchange minerals from your collections; also Guess the mineral; Ecology and eco-habits; Drawing on stone art site.
Those who wish can go on a walking tour to the GEOpark, which will also become a kind of geologists’ tent city, and take part in the Museum orientation quest, drink hot tea in a tea tent, and sing to the guitar or listen to others sing at the Songs by the Fire music site. There will be a special program for children – Sandbox – with active games.
The finale of EcoNight will include a parade of exemplary dog breeders with their pets and the lighting of pyrotechnic fountains.
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Text: Anzhelika Stepanova, Photo: Norilsk Museum
