Philadelphia city council investigates sudden closure of oldest natural history research institution in the Americas

The Academy of Natural Sciences, a 198-year-old public museum in Philadelphia run by Drexel University, shuttered in September because of rising costs. The university’s president will now testify under subpoena before Philadelphia’s city council on 16 November, answering questions about the sudden closure and what will happen to the museum’s valuable collection of more than 19 million specimens.

While many of the Academy’s workers have been laid off, collection managers still on staff have faced an “astronomical increase” in emails and calls, says Amber Redfield, a former geosciences collection manager and fossil preparator at the Academy who was recently laid off and is now volunteering there. She says that people have been asking: “Is this safe?” “Can I see it?” “Can I book an appointment?”

Isa Betancourt, a former curatorial assistant in the entomology department and an organiser with the Save the Academy coalition, says the number of curators has dropped from 11 to five. The invertebrate palaeontology collection manager recently left for a job at the American Museum of Natural History . “There is no plan to replace her," Betancourt tells The Art Newspaper . Endowed curator posts in entomology and palaeontology have gone unfilled for years, she adds.

Founded in 1812, the Academy describes itself as the oldest natural history research institution in the Americas. It opened its museum to the public in 1828 and, in 1868, put Hadrosaurus foulkii on view as the world’s first mounted dinosaur skeleton . Its millions of specimens include plants collected on the Lewis and Clark expedition, John James Audubon ’s birds and Thomas Jefferson’s fossils.

The Academy became a Drexel affiliate in 2011, while retaining its status as a separate non-profit with its own board. Drexel recently told the city council it had “stepped in as a partner” that year, when the Academy “faced severe financial distress”.

The city council passed a resolution on 17 September to investigate the Academy’s closing. The resolution calls institutions like the Academy “part of the cultural fabric of the city” and says its shuttering would especially affect area residents “for whom the museum is a fixture of the neighbourhood”. An initial hearing took place on 26 October, which Drexel’s president did not attend.

At the hearing, representatives for Drexel cited the building's "substantial capital needs" and told the city council that public exhibitions need a new model, "almost certainly in a different location".

Sarah McAnulty, a squid biologist and Save the Academy organiser, says city council members asked Drexel representatives to check their numbers. "If all you need to keep the public museum open is a million dollars, what the hell are we doing here?" she says, describing the city council’s reaction.

Staff learned of the Academy’s closure at a morning meeting on 1 September, Redfield says. Most staff were laid off by 1 November, and many people "found out they were let go in a report by The Philadelphia Inquirer ", she adds.

Redfield says the museum drew more than 60,000 visitors in its final 12 days of public hours. "That's not enough time to shut down a lifetime of scientific and educational work," she adds. "I planned to retire at the Academy and don't have any backup plans." Now she is volunteering.

"Unfortunately, volunteer labour is essential to most natural history collections, but it’s not sustainable,” Betancourt says. “The fact that the volunteer manager was initially slated for termination and had to be reinstated shows Drexel has no idea how these collections function."

Betancourt adds that the Academy's social media accounts have been inactive for two months and staff do not have access because Drexel controls them. The Academy's director of marketing and communications was let go with the closure. Betancourt says the university may not realise that communications and education staff connect the collections with the public and potential benefactors, "otherwise, the collections work in darkness”.

The William Penn Foundation has offered a year of funding to replace Drexel's subsidy for the museum. "The foundation has not received a response to our offer," a spokesperson told the Inquirer . Drexel later stated that it had not received a "formal proposal with a defined level of financial support".

Betancourt says Save the Academy wants Drexel to explain "why no capital campaign was undertaken" and "why the scientific community has been shut out of behind-the-scenes negotiations. The closed-door negotiations got us a closed museum. Natural history collections tied to a financially haemorrhaging university are not safe natural history collections.”