{"id":117920,"date":"2026-10-04T12:07:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117920"},"modified":"2026-10-04T12:07:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:07:21","slug":"academy-of-natural-sciences-closes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bgodinspired-news\/bgodinspired-science-news\/academy-of-natural-sciences-closes\/","title":{"rendered":"Academy of Natural Sciences Closes After 198 Years. 19 Million Specimens Stay."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 39 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>On Sunday 27 September 2026, families lined up outside a museum in Philadelphia for one last look at the dinosaurs. Three days later the doors were locked. After 198 years of letting the public in, the Academy of Natural Sciences closes its museum, and nobody can say for sure if it will open again.<\/p>\n\n<p>This is the oldest natural science institution in the Americas. It was founded in 1812 and first opened to the public in 1828. It gave the world its first standing dinosaur skeleton.<\/p>\n\n<p>But here is the part most headlines skipped. Almost nothing has left the building. More than 19 million specimens are still inside: pressed plants, pinned insects, shells, birds, fish, fossils. The doors are shut. The collection is not gone.<\/p>\n\n<p>So what is a museum when nobody can visit it? The answer is more interesting than it sounds.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Why the Academy of Natural Sciences closes its museum now<\/h2>\n\n<p>The news came on 1 September 2026, with only one month of warning. The museum is part of Drexel University, which took it on in 2011.<\/p>\n\n<p>The reason given was money. In <a href=\"https:\/\/ansp.org\/learn\/Journal-Archive\/2026\/September\/changing-the-future-of-the-academy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">its statement<\/a>, the Academy said that after the COVID-19 pandemic, &#8220;patterns of visitation and audience behavior changed in lasting ways, while the costs of operating the museum continued to rise.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>In plain words: fewer people were coming, and the building and the staff cost more every year.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then something strange happened. Once people heard the museum was leaving, they came. The local news site Billy Penn reported more than 41,000 visitors across three weekends. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/10\/03\/nx-s1-5989716\/philadelphia-academy-natural-sciences-museum-closure\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR reported<\/a> that the money coming in during those last weeks was more than 20 times higher than in the same month a year earlier.<\/p>\n\n<p>One visitor, Alexandria McCormick, told NPR why she came: &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>The story is not finished. A local charity, the William Penn Foundation, has offered to pay the museum&#8217;s running costs for at least one more year. Drexel says it is still talking with the foundation and wants a plan that will last. Philadelphia&#8217;s city council has scheduled a meeting about the Academy&#8217;s future for 7 October 2026. The museum may reopen. It may not.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>What stays behind when a museum closes<\/h2>\n\n<p>When you visit a natural history museum, you walk past a few rooms of things in glass cases. It feels like you have seen the museum.<\/p>\n\n<p>You have seen the front room. The rest sits behind the walls, in rows of cabinets and drawers that visitors never walk past.<\/p>\n\n<p>The Academy says it holds more than 19 million specimens, fossils and records. Its library has more than 75,000 titles, and the oldest was printed in 1529. There are fossils that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, an early president of the United States. There are plants picked and pressed by the Lewis and Clark expedition as it crossed North America in the early 1800s.<\/p>\n\n<p>And in 1868, the Academy did something no one had done before. It took the bones of a plant-eating dinosaur, dug out of a pit in New Jersey ten years earlier, and stood them up on a frame the way the animal might have stood in life. It was the first mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Every dinosaur you have seen standing in a museum hall follows that idea.<\/p>\n\n<p>None of this has been sold or thrown away. Drexel says the research, the collections and the library all carry on. In its own words, the collections &#8220;are not simply records of the past.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<h2>The drawer that holds a name<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is the detail worth slowing down for.<\/p>\n\n<p>Among those 19 million, the Academy keeps more than 73,000 of what scientists call type specimens.<\/p>\n\n<p>A type specimen is a simple idea. When a scientist names a new kind of animal or plant, the name has to be tied to a real example. One actual beetle on one actual pin. One pressed leaf on one sheet of paper. From then on, if anyone anywhere in the world wonders, &#8220;Is the thing I found really that species?&#8221;, the last word is to compare it with that example.<\/p>\n\n<p>So a name is not only a word in a book. It is tied to a body in a drawer.<\/p>\n\n<p>That means one building in Philadelphia holds the reference point for tens of thousands of names. Somebody has to keep each one dry, keep the pests away, and know which drawer it is in.<\/p>\n\n<p>That work did not stop on 30 September.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Why old drawers still teach new things<\/h2>\n\n<p>You might ask what use a bird that died 150 years ago could be. Quite a lot, it turns out.<\/p>\n\n<p>According to Drexel, the Academy lends out about 7,000 specimens and tissue samples a year to researchers around the world. Since its bird records went online in 2018, scientists from 87 countries have used them in more than 700 published studies.<\/p>\n\n<p>Museum drawers are also where new species usually turn up. That sounds backwards, so a team at the natural history museum in Paris checked. They took 600 species that were formally named in 2007 and looked up when each one had first been collected. On average, the specimen had sat on a shelf for about 21 years before anyone worked out that it was something new. Half had waited 12 years or more. The study was published in the journal Current Biology in 2012.<\/p>\n\n<p>The lead author, Beno\u00eet Fontaine, put it simply: &#8220;Species new to science are almost never recognized as such in the field.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Someone collects it. Someone keeps it. Years later, someone else opens the drawer and looks properly. We have seen this pattern before. <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/nature-and-creation\/tanzania-fossil-oldest-dinosaur-rocks-younger\/\">A fossil collected in Tanzania in 1963<\/a> waited for decades before it changed what scientists think about the age of Africa&#8217;s early dinosaur rocks. And <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/nature-and-creation\/new-wild-cat-species-tilcayo\/\">a small wild cat in Bolivia<\/a> was known to the people living beside it long before science gave it a name.<\/p>\n\n<p>A collection can also answer things nobody thought to ask when it was made. In the 1940s an Academy scientist named Ruth Patrick helped show that the mix of living things in a river, right down to its tiny algae, tells you how healthy the water is. The Academy still holds one of the largest collections of those algae in the world.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The two oldest jobs<\/h2>\n\n<p>Think about what the people in that building do all day. Mostly two things. They keep. And they name.<\/p>\n\n<p>In British museums, the person in charge of a collection is still called a keeper. The word curator comes from a Latin word that means to take care of. The job title is the job.<\/p>\n\n<p>There is a very old story about how people began, and those same two jobs sit right at the start of it. The first human is placed in a garden and asked to look after it and keep it. Then God brings the animals over, one kind after another, to see what the human will call them. Whatever the human calls each one, that becomes its name.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is a small scene and easy to read past. But notice what it says about us. Before anyone in that story builds a city or fights a war, a person is asked to pay attention. To look at each living thing long enough to tell it apart from the others, and to care enough to give it a name. And in the story, God wants to hear the answer.<\/p>\n\n<p>If that story is onto something, then the people sliding drawers open in a closed museum are not doing an odd side job. They are doing one of the first things people were ever asked to do.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What you can do with this<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Learn one name this week.<\/strong> Pick a bird, a tree or a weed you pass every day and find out what it is called. Ask an older neighbour. You will not walk past it the same way again.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Go in the ordinary months.<\/strong> The crowds came to Philadelphia in the last four weeks. The small museum, library or garden near you needs visitors when nothing is closing. Many have free days.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Look from where you are.<\/strong> The Academy says more than 1.7 million of its records have been put online. A phone is enough to look through a drawer on the other side of the world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>Somewhere behind those locked doors there is almost certainly a drawer holding something nobody has looked at properly yet. It may have been waiting for twenty years. It can wait a little longer.<\/p>\n\n<p>The doors may open again, or they may not. Either way, the keeping goes on. So does the naming.<\/p>\n\n<p>That may be the most hopeful part of the whole story. A crowd is not what makes a collection matter. Somebody kept it, and somebody is keeping it still.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>A good place to start:<\/em><br>\n<strong>The Beginner&#8217;s Guide to Feeling God&#8217;s Presence Every Day (Free)<\/strong><br>\nA short video guide and companion PDF for noticing God in the ordinary moments of a normal day, the same way you just noticed what was in the drawer. <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/free-video-course-feeling-gods-presence\/?utm_source=wordpress&amp;utm_medium=article-inline&amp;utm_content=hero\">Get the free guide<\/a>. Free.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Discussion question<\/h2>\n\n<p>Should a museum stay open even when it loses money, or is it enough to keep the collection safe behind closed doors? Tell us what you think in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share this<\/h2>\n\n<p>The oldest natural history museum in the Americas just closed after 198 years. But its 19 million specimens are still inside, and 73,000 of them are the one example a species name is tied to. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bgodinspired-news\/bgodinspired-science-news\/academy-of-natural-sciences-closes\/<\/p>\n\n<p>I did not know this: new species are almost never spotted in the wild. On average they sit in a museum drawer for 21 years before someone notices. Which makes a closed museum a very different thing. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bgodinspired-news\/bgodinspired-science-news\/academy-of-natural-sciences-closes\/<\/p>\n\n<p>41,000 people showed up in the last three weekends before this museum closed. Makes me want to visit the small one near me before it has to announce anything. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bgodinspired-news\/bgodinspired-science-news\/academy-of-natural-sciences-closes\/<\/p>\n\n<h2>Questions and answers<\/h2>\n\n<h3>Why did the Academy of Natural Sciences close its museum?<\/h3>\n<p>The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia closed its public museum on 30 September 2026 because of money. The Academy said visitor habits changed for good after the COVID-19 pandemic while the cost of running the museum kept rising. The closure was announced on 1 September 2026, and the last regular public day was Sunday 27 September 2026.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Is the Academy of Natural Sciences closed permanently?<\/h3>\n<p>That is not yet decided. The Academy of Natural Sciences museum closed to the public on 30 September 2026, but the William Penn Foundation has offered to cover its running costs for at least one more year, and Drexel University says it is still looking for a long-term plan. Philadelphia&#8217;s city council scheduled a meeting on the Academy&#8217;s future for 7 October 2026. The research, collections and library continue either way.<\/p>\n\n<h3>What happens to the Academy of Natural Sciences&#8217; 19 million specimens?<\/h3>\n<p>The specimens stay. Drexel University says the Academy of Natural Sciences will keep and care for its collection of more than 19 million specimens, fossils and records, and that its research and library will continue. Scientists can still borrow and study the specimens. The Academy lends out about 7,000 specimens and tissue samples a year. What is unclear is when, or whether, the public will be able to see them in person again.<\/p>\n\n<h3>What is a type specimen?<\/h3>\n<p>A type specimen is the real, physical example that a species name is tied to. When a scientist names a new animal or plant, one specimen is kept in a collection as the reference for that name. Anyone who later needs to check whether something belongs to that species can compare it with the type. The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia holds more than 73,000 type specimens.<\/p>\n\n<h3>How long does it take to name a new species?<\/h3>\n<p>Often decades. A 2012 study in the journal Current Biology, led by Beno\u00eet Fontaine of the natural history museum in Paris, looked at 600 species named in 2007. On average, about 21 years passed between a specimen being collected and the species being formally described, and half waited 12 years or more. 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What they are for, and who is still keeping them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bgodinspired-science-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117921,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117920\/revisions\/117921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}