Save the Academy: Families Mourn Final Public Day at the Academy of Natural Sciences

The Academy of Natural Sciences opened to the public for what staff and supporters feared would be its final visit at 10 a.m. on a rainy Sunday. We parked near Logan Square at 10:02, shouldered a large umbrella and joined a line that stretched to the end of the block.

As we entered, a reporter asked if anyone wanted to speak about what the Academy meant to them. My eight-year-old son, Casey, practically produced a microphone from his rain-jacket pocket.

“It’s selfish,” he told the reporter, “for those in charge to close the museum after being offered money that could have kept it open, at least for now.” He said he loved the museum, had attended summer camp there for several weeks, and had been coming since he was four.

For a period that now feels too brief, dinosaurs dominated our household. Casey’s passions—animals, sea creatures, dinosaurs, then Pokémon and now Dungeons & Dragons—were nurtured at the Academy. My wife Rachel first brought him there during his dinosaur phase; she still remembers him cornering an expert and the two of them discussing a trilobite fossil for half an hour.

After Casey finished his impromptu interview, the reporter turned to me. I told her I was angry. How could an institution that claims to educate close a place so vital to city children’s learning? Reports that Drexel University, which oversees the museum, declined offers of public or private funding left many stunned and frustrated. Why couldn’t city leaders take stronger action to protect a building steeped in local history?

You can hear the stages of grief in our voices: bargaining, then depression. We headed straight to the gift shop. Earlier in the month a family visit had yielded a long line; on this final day the shelves were largely picked over. We found rotating dinosaur nameplates—“Casey” for him and “Leah” for his baby sister—but there was no “Jane” for our middle daughter, so Casey chose a cricket lollipop for her instead.

We walked both floors of the dinosaur hall and sat at the start of the dioramas while Casey wrote in his notebook. He inherited my sentimentality—before we throw anything away, he insists we photograph it. I handed him my phone to document our final visit; later I counted 168 photos.

While the dinosaur hall is the museum’s most iconic space, longtime visitors know the heart of the Academy sits on the third floor in the “Outside In” room. There, insects, lizards and ground-dwelling creatures mingle with a reading nook, microscopes and scavenger hunts. For our family, it was the place we truly felt at home. On Sunday it felt like an end-of-world scene.

Museum staff were reportedly not told of impending layoffs directly; many learned about their uncertain month-long status through news reports. In response, employees turned the “Outside In” room into a living memorial: visitors were invited to leave sticky-note testimonies on the walls. By Sunday the space was layered with pleas, memories and drawings—handwritten messages spanning generations: “My great grandfather took my grandpa here. My grandpa brought my mom, and today I’m here with my daughter. 5 generations. Thank you for everything.” A few inches away: “I <3 Dino.”

People asked practical, aching questions: what will happen to the live animals—the tortoise, the enormous cockroach—and what becomes of the fossils and the 19 million specimens stored behind closed doors? A zoo has reportedly offered to take some animals, and other institutions have pledged to keep bonded animals together, but the fate of the collections and the ripple effects on Philadelphia’s museum district remain uncertain.

We left the Academy around 11:30. Later that day, hundreds of supporters marched through the rain to City Hall in another show of defiance. Count our family among those grateful to the people continuing to press for answers and solutions.

Perhaps acceptance does not have to be inevitable.