By Ash Fossey, 2029
On September 30th the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, the oldest natural history museum in the Americas, closed its doors for good. This decision came with only a month’s notice with the president of the university informing the staff the same day as the public in hopes of limiting resistance to the idea. Despite this, the surrounding community gathered in large protests and brought the city council in to attempt to protect the museum. The decision to close the museum was made due to financial issues with supporting the locally-beloved building. However, this reasoning falls short with the many offers to lower taxes on the property, the high likelihood that the community would donate funds to keep the museum afloat, and the offers from the city to buy the collection. The building itself is 114 years old with a massive collection of 19 million artifacts including multiple holotype fossils (the first discovery of a species) and past presidents’ personal fossil collections. This allows the museum to qualify for all sorts of financial aid and protections from the local government.
Sadly, the closure of the museum persisted despite resistance from the community and thousands of petition signatures. The university plans to relocate the collection into storage which poses great risk to the fragile artifacts and the action itself will cost them a lot of money, possibly more than keeping the museum open. People theorize that this is a part of the “attack on science” seen through recent budget cuts and limits on education. Many fear things will be lost or secretly sold off to private collectors and further damage the publically-available knowledge.
