The Butterfly of Peace.

A dazzling suite of 240 diamonds representing every variety of fancy colored diamonds in existence and arranged in the shape of a large butterfly will be on display to the public for a limited time in the Museum's Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems. The diamonds for the stunning Butterfly of Peace, weighing a total of 166.94 carats, were painstakingly assembled over 12 years (1992-2004) by Alan Bronstein and Harry Rodman of Aurora Gems, Inc. in New York.

Although diamonds are perceived as a white — actually colorless — gem, they naturally but rarely come in a wide variety of colors. Colored diamonds are called "fancies."

The Butterfly of Peace will remain on public display only until Thursday, September 11th when it will travel internationally as part of the revived exhibition, The Nature of Diamonds organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in collaboration with the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (www.rom.on.ca); the Houston Museum of Natural Science (www.hmns.org); and The Field Museum, Chicago (www.fieldmuseum.org).