Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will close its public museum after nearly two centuries, Drexel and Academy leaders announced Tuesday.
The museum, which opened to the public in 1828, will cease operations at the end of the business day on Sept. 30. Its final day with regular public hours will be Sunday, Sept. 27.
Leaders said museum attendance had declined in recent years. Although the Academy worked to rebuild visitorship after the pandemic, “patterns of visitation and audience behavior changed in lasting ways, while the costs of operating the museum continued to rise,” the announcement said. “Over time, it became clear that these were not temporary pressures, but 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.”
Closing the current Parkway museum was “a difficult decision taken to concentrate resources on the Academy’s enduring scientific assets and research,” according to the announcement, signed by Drexel president Antonio Merlo and Academy board chair Suzanne Biemiller.
Academy museum closure will affect 27 employees
The museum, located on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 19th Street, reduced its operating schedule from five days a week to three last October. It had been open Friday through Sunday, though Thursdays were added in July and August for the Dino-Mite Summer program.
Drexel said 27 of the Academy’s 80 employees—about one-third of its workforce—will be “impacted” by the closure. The university did not specify whether those employees would be laid off or transferred, and it did not immediately respond to questions about how much money the closure would save.
At the same time, Drexel and the Academy announced that Scott Cooper, who had served as president and CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences for nearly nine years, was stepping down immediately.
The Drexel and Academy boards will “continue working together to identify an appropriate governance structure and interim and permanent leadership for the Academy,” Tuesday’s statement said.
Collections and research will continue
The museum closure will not affect the Academy’s scientific collections or research programs, which will remain in the Parkway building, the university said. The Academy owns the building, according to a university spokesperson.
The Academy, which became affiliated with Drexel in 2011, is best known publicly for its museum exhibits, including a Dinosaur Hall featuring dinosaur bones and full-scale replicas. Its exhibitions have addressed environmental issues and drawn on the Academy’s collection of approximately 19 million specimens, along with historically significant items connected to Thomas Jefferson and Lewis and Clark.
The museum also offers hands-on science experiences, including a “big-dig” fossil exhibit, as well as traditional dioramas depicting bison, bears, tigers and other animals in their ecosystems. The current “Botany of Nations” exhibition “reshape[s] the historic tale of Lewis & Clark through Indigenous perspectives,” according to its exhibition description.
The Academy will continue building and maintaining its collections and conducting research through departments including the Patrick Center for Environmental Research.
Biemiller said “the trustees of the Academy know that this news about the closure of the museum is going to be a blow to Philadelphians, and I would love for them to know we share their feelings of loss about this beloved space and place. And we also know that work remains to develop and fund a new strategic and operating model that will ensure that the Academy’s important centuries-long mission to understand the world and inspire us to care for it continues.”
Asked whether the Academy intended to reopen a museum, Biemiller said: “I would hope so. That’s the goal. I think we have not given up on that part of our mission. The Academy is research, it is [specimens and library] collections, and it is public engagement.”
She said it was “incumbent upon us to find places and ways” for the museum to continue, but said its future format had not been determined. “It could be at the current location in a different configuration, it could be a new location, it could be imagined in different ways.”
The “fundamental goal to ensure that people have access to the natural world, can see these birds from North American or dinosaur bones and fossils the Academy scientists have collected and understand how they connect to the world,” was what mattered, Biemiller said.
Drexel faces continuing financial challenges
The museum closure comes as Drexel University addresses a budget deficit, restructures academic programs and prepares to move from a quarter-based calendar to semesters by fall 2027. The university is also contending with another national decline in the number of high school students beginning this year.
Over roughly the past decade, Drexel has lost about 20% of its enrollment. Freshman enrollment fell 19% last fall, while the university is projecting a 16% increase in first-year students this fall. Drexel enrolled 20,868 undergraduate and graduate students in 2025-26 and is projected to continue running deficits through fiscal year 2028, according to a report from Moody’s.
Merlo told The Inquirer in April that Drexel expected to end the year with a $20 million deficit, down from nearly $40 million the previous year and $63 million in 2024. In May, the university said it had implemented $93 million in “permanent strategies” to address its “structural imbalance” and identified an additional $11 million.
A source familiar with the situation told The Inquirer in April that the Academy had become a financial drain on the university. Drexel provided the Academy with $8,288,000 and $8,914,000 for operations in fiscal years 2025 and 2024, respectively, according to financial statements posted on the Academy’s website. The figures include in-kind support from Drexel.
Tensions between the Academy and Drexel became public in April, when The Inquirer reported that Drexel wanted either to take full control of the Academy or end the partnership.
Academy’s long-term future remains uncertain
Discussions between the two institutions are continuing, with the offices of Gov. Josh Shapiro and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker involved. Former Comcast executive and U.S. Ambassador to Canada David L. Cohen has been selected by Shapiro to serve as a third-party facilitator, the university said.
“Together, we are advancing discussions focused on the Academy’s long-term future and identifying new opportunities to strengthen its scientific mission, ensure access to its world-renowned collections, expand public engagement in the natural sciences, and maintain the Academy’s enduring presence in Philadelphia,” the message said.
The Academy’s affiliation with Drexel began in 2011 through a partnership agreement that blended the organizations but stopped short of a full merger. The institutions maintain separate boards.
According to a 2013 Drexel audit, the affiliation agreement said the Academy would retain its status as a separate nonprofit organization but would become, as of September 2012, a Drexel subsidiary owned entirely by the university.
A Drexel spokesperson said in April that the university had “invested a substantial amount annually in the Academy to maintain access to the Academy’s collections while we worked with the Academy and the community to identify a sustainable path to keep this resource in Philadelphia.”
Cooper became the Academy’s leader in 2017 after serving as vice president of collections, knowledge and engagement at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada. Previously, he was director of museums at the Qatar Foundation in Doha, Qatar.
Under Cooper’s leadership, the Academy “renewed its public and scientific mission,” Tuesday’s joint statement said. “It revitalized galleries, developed original exhibitions showcasing its collections and research, and advanced co-curatorial approaches that brought new voices into programs and interpretation.”
Cooper will remain with the Academy for a period as a consultant but was not available for comment, a spokesperson said.
“We’re sorry he’s leaving, but understand his decision,” Biemiller said.
“It’s a competitive world that museums inhabit, and people make choices every single day,” Cooper told the Inquirer after his 2017 appointment. “We need to ensure that when they come to the Academy they are getting a reward for their investment of time.”
