After the Museum Closed, the Fight Over 19 Million Specimens Moves to City Hall
PHILADELPHIA — The Academy of Natural Sciences closed its museum to the public on Sept. 27, ending nearly 200 years of public exhibitions on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. What happens next to its 19 million specimens is now a question for City Hall.
The museum, which opened in 1828 and is the nation’s oldest natural history museum, was shuttered by Drexel University, which cited lasting changes in visitor patterns and rising operating costs, according to a joint announcement on Sept. 1.
The collections include mollusks, fish, birds and plants gathered over two centuries, along with Lewis and Clark specimens, fossils collected by Thomas Jefferson and one of the world’s largest collections of diatoms, according to NatureWorldNews.
The specimens remain in the building for now. Academy leadership plans to sell the building and move the collections, but no new location has been chosen, according to NatureWorldNews.
The William Penn Foundation offered to cover the museum’s operating costs for at least a year as a bridge to a long-term plan, but Drexel has not accepted the offer.
City Council’s Legislative Oversight Committee held its first hearing on the closure on Oct. 7 and is scheduled to meet again at 2 p.m. on Oct. 26 to examine the decision’s consequences and options for preserving public access, under a resolution introduced by Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr.
Young also introduced a bill that would block housing and retail development at the Academy’s site through a zoning overlay, requiring developers to meet with community groups before any zoning hearing, according to thecooldown.com.
Academy president Scott Cooper resigned the day the closure was announced. Deputy Mayor Patricia Wellenbach, a former Please Touch Museum chief executive, was installed as the Academy’s interim leader.
In the museum’s final month, attendance ran more than 20 times higher than the previous September, news reports said, a late surge of affection for an institution generations of Philadelphians first visited on school field trips.