Inside the rally to save the Academy of Natural Sciences

There were hand-printed signs—“SAY NO TO DREX-TINCTION; DINO-LOVERS VOTE”—and rousing chants: “Hey, Drex, save T-Rex!” There were City Council members and entomologists, public school science teachers, and Pennsylvania State Rep. Chris Rabb.

Sarah McAnulty, a squid biologist and executive director of Skype a Scientist, which helped organize the rally, wore a shirt printed with green and orange lizards. Brenda Exon gleefully handed out tiny Philadelphia flags because an early vice president of the Academy, clergyman and naturalist Henry Christopher McCook, designed that flag’s coat of arms in the late 1890s.

And Mazzi Ingram, 23, an environmental educator from North Philadelphia, talked about being part of a longtime Academy program, Women in Natural Sciences (WINS), starting her sophomore year in high school. She spent weekends “wrangling butterflies” while learning about environmental justice and meeting scientists, particularly people of color, who inspired her to follow their lead.

Dinosaurs and disturbing trends

They came to save the dinosaurs—but the crowd’s passion seemed outsized for a museum that has, in recent years, drawn a scant 40-60 visitors on a typical Friday. The museum’s impending closure, and the suddenness of the announcement, struck many as emblematic of larger, disturbing trends: rising skepticism toward science, attacks on public education, an emphasis on profit over “third spaces” where people can gather and learn.

Over and over, speakers emphasized the museum’s role in connecting current issues—climate change, species extinction—to the broad sweep of time. A semiquincentennial, a mere 250 years, is a blink in comparison to the cretaceous period, 145-66 million years ago, when T-Rex and triceratops roamed the earth.

“The exhibits offer visual proof of prehistoric life. They develop evidence-based thinking,” said Nina Ahmad, a City Council member-at-large who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.

Entomologist Isa Betancourt, who worked at the Academy for 10 years, noted that “in an age of AI and truth decay, the Academy is a reputable source of truth” and that at a time of increasing social isolation, “it’s a place for people to connect in person.”

A public decline

Except…the public apparently hadn’t gotten that memo. In announcing the museum’s closure, Drexel and Academy officials noted a decline in attendance, from 300,000 annually at a pre-pandemic peak to 126,000 in fiscal year 2025. That drop, along with increased operating costs and long-deferred maintenance issues, led to the “difficult decision” to shutter the museum.

And while that announcement might have stunned many Philadelphians—including one caller to a WHYY radio show about the Academy who said her kids used to call the museum the “Dead Zoo”—there were earlier hints of the Academy’s and Drexel’s financial struggles. (The Academy became a subsidiary of Drexel in 2011, though it continued to maintain its own board and a separate endowment, valued at about $78 million.)

In fall 2025, the Academy shrank the museum’s operating hours from five days a week to three. Around the same time, members of the Academy’s board contacted former diplomat and Philadelphia business leader David L. Cohen to seek his advice on the museum’s fate; there was talk of relocating the entire Academy—which includes extensive research and education branches, along with the public-facing museum—to another US city or even another country.

“They win if we’re silent”

Cohen is now working with Drexel and Academy officials—he’s acting on behalf of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—to broker new agreements between the two entities and help them figure out a path forward. Mayor Cherelle Parker is “loaning” deputy mayor Patricia Wellenbach to serve as an unpaid senior advisor to the Academy; the executive director, Scott Cooper, stepped down amid the closure announcement.

The goal, Cohen said in an interview, is to preserve all three legs of the Academy’s mission—research, education, and public engagement—here in Philadelphia. That could mean partnership with another nonprofit or an alternative exhibition space. “But it does not mean, necessarily, preserving the current museum in the current building.”

To last Tuesday’s crowd, those are fighting words.

“They win if we’re silent,” exhorted Rabb. “Closing the museum is not an option. Let’s keep the Academy wide open.” And 5th district City Council member Jeffery Young, Jr. suggested zoning the building so that it could not be sold for condominiums or apartments.

“You have to move with the times”

During the weekend following the closure announcement, 14,000 people poured into the museum. No doubt, they ogled the life-sized skeleton of an Avaceratops, dug in the fossil bed, and examined dioramas of bison, musk ox, and moose.

Or perhaps they checked out the current exhibit, Botany of Nations, co-curated by ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón, about plants “as portals to Indigenous storytelling and knowledge.” Salmón will speak about “Kincentricity” at the Academy, a talk open to the public, on September 17 (tickets are pay-what-you-wish).

Many in the rally crowd voiced nostalgia for school trips to the Academy, overnight “camp-ins” in Dinosaur Hall, or moments in the bright, humid butterfly exhibit. But there were also murmurs of discontent: the Academy hadn’t done enough to publicize the museum; it hadn’t evolved to compete with immersive, interactive exhibits at other cultural institutions.

Adam Teterus, 39, a self-described “Jurassic Park-era kid”, grew up in King of Prussia and remembers coming to the Academy of Natural Sciences every summer with his best friend. “It’s bittersweet to visit the museum after many years and see how little things have changed,” he said.

“You have to move with the times, constantly reinvent yourself for new generations. [The Academy] didn’t do that. They didn’t communicate that,” Ahmad said in an interview after the rally.

Nonetheless, Ahmad is determined to push back against the closure. The first step would be a hearing before a City Council committee, followed by a “brainstorming session” with museum advocates, citizens, and officials from both Drexel and the Academy.

Taking action for the Academy

Meantime, speakers urged the crowd to take actions listed on a new website, Save-the-Academy.org, including signing a petition, visiting the museum, and contacting the governor, the mayor, members of City Council, and Drexel’s president, Antonio Merlo.

Near the end of the rally, Christy Schneider, who develops museum exhibits, invited everyone to cup one hand around their ear as if listening to the inside of a shell.

What were they hearing? The jingle of profit? The ancient roar of a T-Rex? Or, perhaps, the rumble of civic engagement as conversation about the museum’s future—and about our role in preserving the natural world—continues.

At top: Handmade signs from a September 8 rally at the Academy of Natural Sciences. (Photo by Anndee Hochman.)

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