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Posted on 10/02/2026 2:44:31 PM PDT by Cronos
In early September, when the Academy of Natural Sciences announced it would close its natural history museum, the oldest in the country, scientists, teachers, passionate fans and elected officials were shocked and outraged. Leadership cited declining visitor numbers post-pandemic and rising costs. They said they had to close the museum to protect the financial future of the scientific research and collections.
Longtime staffers say there’s more to the story.
They agree that attendance did drop and that it’s always been expensive to run and maintain its century-old building. However, they also argue that missteps from the museum and Drexel leaders, such as a pivot in audience strategy, led to the institution’s gradual decline.
“There was a big push to not be known as the dinosaur museum in Philadelphia,” said Jacquie Genovesi, who had worked at the academy for 34 years until she was laid off last October.
She said the museum was long known as a place for kids and parents, but that there was then a push to attract new audiences, including adults without kids.
“It was a poor decision, and it didn’t need to be an ‘either or’; it should have been an ‘and.’ You can attract both, families with young children and dinosaur enthusiasts and adults who want to go to a more modern museum,” Genovesi said.
Instead, she said new initiatives, like a $3 million art gallery, came at the cost of programs and exhibits that attracted core audiences.
“There definitely were people at multiple different levels that were fighting to have the things that we knew visitors loved, to stay and be part of what we were doing,” she said.
Drexel and the Academy of Natural Sciences declined to make anyone available for an interview, and reiterated their previous statement that they did not decide to close the museum lightly, but had to do it because audience and visitor behavior changed after the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of running the museum continued to rise. They say these were “fundamental changes in the economics of the Academy’s operational model, costs that have imperiled the Academy’s ability to discharge its overall mission and preserve its legacy.”
Staff at the museum in the 1990s remember hugely popular programs for families, school groups and wedding parties. Peter Cook, who managed overnight and weekend programs, recalled groups sleeping at the museum on Fridays and Saturdays, bringing in $300,000 a year. He said at its peak, the museum would have 40 to 45 overnight programs with 300 to 400 participants each night.
“We had a full schedule of bookings for people to come to the museum. Financially the museum was great. Between our income and the grants, state, federal, local foundations, lots of money was available,” Cook said.
He said it was the most fun job he ever had, recalling a moment he had when he was teaching a dinosaur class to school children and unveiled a sample of fossilized dinosaur poop, which helped scientists understand what dinosaurs ate.
“To 8-year-olds, this is funny,” he said. “Then the immediate reaction was, ‘ew.’ And occasionally I would hear a kid say, ‘cool.’ And I knew that it might be a budding scientist right there.”
Cook said the building was very old, so there were maintenance issues, but the organization had money set aside for repairs and that there were no immediate problems that couldn’t be addressed.
“We never had a clogged toilet during an overnight, even though you had 300 people in the building using them,” he said.
The academy also had a large group of active volunteers eager to contribute to the organization, said Dusti Morton, who started as a volunteer, worked in live animal exhibits and helped manage overnight programs from the 1990s to the early 2000s.
It was also the home of the Women in Natural Sciences program, which had foundation and grant funding to introduce young women from public and charter high schools in Philadelphia to careers in science through after-school programs, serving mainly children from low-income, single-parent households.
Nancy Peter used to run the program from the early 1980s to the 1990s as the academy’s director of education. She said that in the years after she left, the program “really exploded.”
“It is one of the longest-running museum-based youth programs in the country,” she said. She added that its students have gone on to become successful scientists, and that there is ongoing federally funded research to follow the lives of students who joined.
However, even though the museum was busy and vibrant, there were financial issues, said Genovesi, who worked at the academy from 1991 until last year, including as vice president of education. She said she recalled the museum having rounds of layoffs during the time that she was there.
The Academy of Natural Sciences, like other Philadelphia nonprofit institutions, including WHYY, were caught up in and lost money in a Ponzi scheme in the 1990s, but Genovesi said that was not the turning point financially. She said trouble started before, and continued after that, in part because for years, the organization put off large, but necessary, maintenance projects to deal with pressing issues like ventilation, the roof and collections storage.
“There were multiple talks of capital campaigns through multiple presidents and, unfortunately, things happened, and economic downturns and COVID and those things where it was just never the right time,” Genovesi said.
She said that’s why she was hopeful when Drexel University affiliated with the academy, because she thought it could be a win-win: The university could subsidize the academy, and in return, start a new department with academy scientists, which would help attract students.
“It seemed like this is a good answer to our challenges and problems, and each of us was getting something, and the museum was alive with Drexel students,” she said.
But in the years after the partnership with Drexel, the museum had fewer visitors, volunteers and programs, said Marie Gilbert, a longtime volunteer, visitor and worker.
“I was paying attention more to what was missing in the hallways in the different exhibit areas,” she said. “I would say, ‘Well, geez. If I was here as the manager of the changing exhibit hall, I would have had a volunteer out here with a cart, a volunteer in there with a cart, I would have volunteers walking around talking to people.’ So I started noticing that part, as like having been a staff member, seeing that the visitors were walking around, but there was no one there to talk to.”
to staff that the museum should expand its audience, but not to the detriment of its core membership base of families with young children.
“The museum was not bringing in as many fun exhibits that were really welcoming both children and adults. We started losing our family memberships. We could see that decline,” Marquardt said.
She said the drop in audience numbers began before the COVID-19 pandemic, contrary to what the academy and Drexel said in their statement explaining why they were closing the museum.
“People didn’t want to visit because they had taken so much of the fun and the interesting aspects out of the museum,” she said. “They had specifically gutted our live animal collection and had let a lot of those staff members go.”
As one example of this shift in strategy, Marquardt and several other former workers pointed to a $3 million art gallery the museum opened in March 2020.
Scott Cooper, CEO of the academy at the time and up until this September, told the Philadelphia Business Journal they were “focusing on our adult audience who want to engage with the natural sciences in new and exciting ways, such as through the arts.”
Genovesi said that even though the decline in attendance was not entirely Cooper’s responsibility, he, other senior leaders and the board were ultimately in charge of that, as well as fundraising for the academy.
She and other former staff said that the job of a museum’s CEO and board is to bring in donations, and that “both of them failed.”
“Not only did they fail to bring in money, I think they failed when they were able to bring in money, that they were too centered on pet projects and things that they thought should be done as opposed to what the institution needed to sustain itself,” Genovesi said.
Drexel and the academy said the new galleries and exhibitions they invested in after the pandemic “produced important successes.”
In more recent years, Genovesi said Drexel University itself had financial troubles, from cuts to federal grants and a decline in enrollment.
When the academy decided to cut opening hours last year to only be open on the weekends, Genovesi said she and other staff saw that as the beginning of the end, unlike all the other cuts and layoffs the academy had been through. She explained the museum used to stay open on slow days because it would need to pay major expenses like electricity and heat even if there were few visitors, which is why she felt like the decision to cut back hours was like giving up.
“It was almost like throwing in the towel, like, ‘We know we can’t maintain this museum. We’re gonna slowly contract until it just isn’t there anymore,’” she said.
Genovesi was laid off last year. She said even though she had known for some time that the museum would not last, she still gets choked up thinking about the place she worked for 34 years.
“I raised my family there, my kids played in the hallways. I had my entire career there, I watched hundreds of thousands of families and children go through the institution,” she said. “It is profoundly sad that the next generation won’t have that.”
Recently, the William Penn Foundation offered to support the museum, but Drexel and the academy say they have not received a formal proposal with a defined level of financial support. City Council members also called for hearings to look into other options to keep the museum open.
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Why wouldn’t you want to be known as the dinosaur museum?
Because you want to be known as the museum of Renaissance art instead?
This is very sad. Our path really isn’t for families and especially children.
Academy of Natural Sciences wanted to cater to un-natural adults. There be females, and there be males, but they wanted to cater to those who won't reproduce thereby resulting in the extinction of customers.
“There was a big push to not be known as the dinosaur museum,”
Why the hell not? So many institutions get hijacked by idiots.
Leaders be like “who wants to deal with patrons and be othered with the public? Just send me my paycheck and give me my raise already. They will never close us.”
Face it. On the whole, people really don’t want to go to Philadelphia.
GMTA
A dinosaur museum for same-sex couples. Oddly enough, the idea did not take off.
A quick search of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and climate change produced these not-so-shocking results:
Climate Change Initiatives and Programs At The Academy
• Collections and Research:
The institution’s extensive archive of over 19 million specimens serves as a vital historical record for tracking biodiversity, evolution, and climate change over centuries. Its environmental researchers also focus on freshwater ecosystems, water quality, and local ecological sustainability.
• Science Shop:
Partnering with West Philadelphia’s Overbrook Environmental Education Center via an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, the Academy launched a community-based “Science Shop” to co-create equitable local climate resilience strategies.
• Confluence Film Festival:
An annual environmental film series held every April during Earth Month, showcasing documentaries and films centered on sustainability and the global climate crisis.
• Academy Town Squares:
Public forums and community discussions addressing regional environmental hurdles, such as how Philadelphia prepares for rising flood risks and climate shifts.
• Public Advocacy and Museum Status:
Following the decision by Drexel University to close the public museum aspect to prioritize research and specimen preservation, local activists and science groups rallied to keep the space open, pointing to its essential role in educating the public on climate science.
“”Equitable, sustainable local climate resilience strategies.””
“”Essential role in educating (INDOCTRINATING) the public on climate science.
Yet another Go Woke, Go Broke
Boy I tell ya’, if you want to screw anything up just put a liberal in charge.
Well, its clearly because dinosaurs' hundreds-of-millions of years of racism and homophobia.
The Marxists are marching through sll institutions and destroying them one by one.
Longwood Gardens is a vibrant cultural presence that continuall packs people in with ever- increasing ticket prices and international reputation. Natural sciences include botany , bringing their marketing and exhibition know- how could be a very productive consultancy.
Well, it really is a “dinosaur” museum now that it’s extinct.
Ok, now that was funny!!
You got me. Kids are repeat customers and then they bring their kids. Even if you are letting them in at half price you are still making money.
It is sort of like a place that is known to be a hit with kids start focusing on adults. I don't mean just by having adult beverages for the parents to enjoy while the crumb snappers enjoy the show but having adult themed toys and such.
You actually are going to lose your base.
—”people really don’t want to go to Philadelphia.”
For many years, we had family memberships at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and the Art Institute.
We went often, out-of-town company... Let’s go to the coal mine or the U-505 submarine...
Sometimes my wife and friends would take the train down from DuPage for a fun day.
Then, in about 2010, a coworker and his family were robbed as they buckled their kids in the back seat by a pack of youths on a sunny weekday. Another had their minivan stolen from the parking lot. A friend of our daughter was robbed on the CTA elevated train in a “nice” area of Chicago...
The last time I went was about ten years back with some of our grandkids and other relatives. Always looking around the parking lot like a drug dealer. NOT COMFORTABLE.
About the same time, a friend was taking a Scout group and families on a rented bus to the Chicago Museum of Natural History.
As they stood in line, a wave of local youths sauntered past the pay register, about $25 per person.
They told him that the $25 was only a suggested donation.
He dropped two twenties on the counter and waved his bus load in...
NEVERMORE.
For the reason of out of control crime.
Sad but true.
Bingo.
Filled with philidelphians.
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