Council gains subpoena power over Drexel as it probes closure
The Academy of Natural Sciences, founded in 1812 and opened to the public in 1828, became the first institution in the world to display a dinosaur skeleton in 1868. In its final weeks, the museum drew crowds that one visitor compared to Grand Central Terminal. Revenue in the museum’s last stretch was more than 20 times higher than in September of the previous year.
Alexandria McCormick, who visited the museum in its closing days with her husband and six children, said her own family had come multiple times a year when she was a child, awakening her love of natural history. “It makes me really sad to think that my children might not also grow up having these experiences and being inspired to love nature this way,” she said.
Drexel University took over financial responsibility for the Academy through an “affiliation” announced in 2011. The Academy became a subsidiary of Drexel but retained its own board and 501(c)(3) organizational status. At the time, the Academy’s president described the institution as having “a rock-solid balance sheet with a $51 million endowment.”
Drexel’s own finances deteriorated over the following years. In 2024, the university reported it was facing a budget shortfall, a problem the school attributed in part to declining enrollment. As attendance at the museum shrank, the Academy laid off some staff and reduced its hours in 2025. The museum later cancelled its 2026 summer camp program. Earlier in 2026, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the university and the Academy were renegotiating their relationship; Drexel sought a full merger that would have given it control of the building, endowment, and collections.
Drexel announced the closure on September 1, giving the museum roughly one month of operation before the September 30 closing date. Some people working to save the museum criticized Drexel for not participating in efforts to avert the closure, or sharing details about how much it would cost to keep the museum open.
“When they announced the one month notice it was a surprise for everybody,” said Isa Betancourt, who worked in the Academy’s entomology department from 2011 to 2021 and returned from Arizona to help organize the “Save the Academy” campaign. “It’s like the leadership didn’t even try to keep it open, and that’s why there’s a lot of frustration around what’s happening. It’s just not right.”
Betancourt, who said the campaign collected more than 114,000 signatures on an online petition, argued that the museum’s fate carried implications beyond Philadelphia. “If this museum can slip away like that, what’s stopping other museums from going the same way? We can’t let this be a precedent.”
In response to a request for comment, Drexel said in a statement that it “remains deeply committed to protecting the Academy of Natural Sciences’ extraordinary legacy.” Drexel has said it will preserve access to the collection for students and researchers, but the terms of that access for the general public are unclear.
The Academy’s collection includes more than 19 million specimens, among them Thomas Jefferson’s fossil collection, plant samples gathered by Lewis and Clark, and an archive of 73,000 holotype specimens — preserved samples that scientists use as references for defining and naming species.
Less than a week before the September 30 closing date, the William Penn Foundation offered a year of bridge funding to buy time to explore more permanent solutions. Drexel said it is exploring the possibility of working with the foundation but would require a plan for long-term sustainability before considering reopening the museum.
Zoe Abrams, who visited with her husband and two children, said the late surge in attendance suggested a different path may have been possible. “Maybe if they had announced this last year, they could have gotten the crowds they have now,” she said. “This is busier than Grand Central. Could have saved things.”
The Philadelphia City Council has moved to investigate how the closure came about. The council proposed altering local zoning overlays to make selling the museum’s 150-year-old building or converting it to other uses more difficult. The council also plans to hold special public hearings, with legislation giving the body subpoena power over Drexel.
“We need to know how this came to be. What were the levers that created this decision, and how do we undo that decision?” said City Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad. “There was no campaign in the recent past that we can find to encourage or to tell the city of Philadelphia, ‘We’re in danger of closing if you don’t come and use our museum.’ None of that.”
The closure comes as the broader U.S. museum sector faces documented financial pressure. “It’s certainly a challenging time for the museum field,” said Natanya Kashan, a spokesperson for the American Alliance of Museums. A 2025 AAM survey of its members found a third had government grants and contracts cancelled, and more than two-thirds were affected by executive orders in some way. “The financial pressures are not only in federal funding,” Kashan added. “They’re also in philanthropy, in corporate donations, in individual giving.”
Philadelphia has a record of intervening to save financially struggling cultural institutions, including the Barnes Foundation art collection and the Please Touch Children’s Museum. Both campaigns, however, took place before those institutions closed. Reopening an already shuttered institution could be much more difficult.