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u/ricochet48 1d ago
Pay to visit museums, that's what keeps them open.
I get that this one is connected to a private school, but many are just simply nonprofits that rely a LOT of donations and public funding.
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u/flanculp 1d ago
Not sustainable. Museums need solid government funding like schools, fire departments, and post offices.
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u/ApprehensiveGate8227 23h ago
Two of the three you listed don’t have solid government funding in the US anymore, but they should be high priority in a functioning society.
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u/ripplenipple69 21h ago
Yes, museums are a service. We pay to have access and to maintain these irreplaceable items because they are priceless. Their value will forever be greater than the trivial amount covered by our taxes
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u/ricochet48 22h ago
It's a combination, sometimes about a fourth each:
- Philanthropy, government grants
- Earned revenue (tickets / programing / licensing)
- Investment/endowment earnings
- Auxiliary services (store, cafe, special events)
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u/Prom3th3an 15h ago
I think it's reasonable for governments and large donors that subsidize museums to expect free admission for the public one day a week.
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u/ricochet48 15h ago
In Chicago the "Museums in the Park" group has to have 52 free days a year for state/local residents.
It's quite nice and reasonable. The tickets are still work it if you're not in a financial bind.
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u/Alexandretta_1938 1d ago
Academia is under siege
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u/DayDiana 1d ago
It really does feel that way. Losing places dedicated to learning and discovery is such a gut punch.
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u/AmericanComplaint 1d ago
It doesn’t just feel that way, it’s very much that way. Trump has successfully cut funding to educational institutions, museums, libraries, public resources in general. He’s also made it more difficult for those institutions to access grant funding. Instability in funding also makes it harder to get loans. They know exactly what they’re doing.
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u/DelcoPAMan 1d ago
The numbers of paying foreign students has been cut, as well as highly discouraged. They don't want them but also don't make it easier for American students.
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u/Chonch_Monkey 1d ago
Academia died when it became a business in the 80s.
It just wasn't noticed until it didn't provide actual jobs
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u/TwoTequilaTuesday 1d ago edited 1d ago
Look at the total assets and endowments of the average university and tell me how "under siege" they are. These are multi-billion dollar institutions with embarrassing amounts of money. And they still find ways to make people believe they're poor or underfunded.
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u/ICBPeng1 1d ago
Won’t someone think of the poor poor athletics program?
We simply must cut some more arts funding to keep them warm
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u/Dangerous-Pilot-6673 21h ago
To be fair, Drexel isn’t that university with a huge football stadium and paying players millions. More likely they are losing students as foreign STEM students choose other counties to learn.
Also also, in Philly, most people go to the Franklin Institute, which has become watered down lately but sure can handle 100 busses a day for school trips. I forgot this place even existed.
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u/me_myself_ai 1d ago
The academic part is staying open. This museum is closing because people weren’t going, not because a data center snuck inside and locked the doors one night
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u/RoundingDown 17h ago
It’s not really helping itself out any.
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u/trenzalor_1810 17h ago
Dude what more would you have us do? They are cutting our funding left and right, making it impossible to recruit specialist from other countries and reducing the education standards in the us so that we can’t get anyone from here. So pls enlighten me how we are the problem
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u/RoundingDown 16h ago
Higher education has become an extension of high school. Make it actual higher education.
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u/TwoTequilaTuesday 1d ago
The museum is part of Drexel University, which is a private institution. They're closing because continuing to operate isn't financially sustainable. From their web site:
In the years that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, the Academy worked actively to rebuild attendance and engagement — investing in new galleries and exhibitions and creating new programming and ways of reaching audiences. Those efforts produced important successes. But patterns of visitation and audience behavior changed in lasting ways, while the costs of operating the museum continued to rise. 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.
After examining a range of alternatives, Academy and Drexel leadership concluded that continuing to operate the museum in its current building and form would place increasing pressure on the resources required to safeguard the collections and sustain the research enterprise. Closing the current Parkway museum is, therefore, a difficult decision taken to concentrate resources on the Academy’s enduring scientific assets and research. Closing the museum addresses an immediate challenge, but it is just the first step in the larger project of building a sustainable future for the Academy.
Ihttps://ansp.org/learn/Journal-Archive/2026/September/changing-the-future-of-the-academy
I don't understand the comparison to data centers or the "sabotage" of scientific institutions. Data centers aren't taking Drexel's money and nobody sabotaged anything. It's an unfortunate symptom when attendance is down and they can't find other means to generate revenue.
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u/SimmentalTheCow 1d ago
Data centers are the default thing to blame for all the world’s problems now, like communists in the 20th century and Jews in the 19th century. It insulates people from having to take any type of societal or personal responsibility when change occurs.
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u/Alarm-Particular 1d ago
Datacenters did 9/11, assassinated Kennedy, blew the hole in the ozone, bought epstine the island, made the frogs gay, paid off the stingray that killed Steve Erwin, took Michael Jacksons nose, changed berenstain to berenstein, and gave orders to hitler
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u/Bardoseth 1d ago
The US government is subsidizing data centers. But they're happy to let such a large and important museum fail, because obviously they don't care for education and an educated populace.
That's what OP is critisizing.
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u/TwoTequilaTuesday 1d ago
Without knowing how much money Drexel receives in state and federal funding, I'd say it's a moot point. Most universities receive a shitload of government grants and even more private donations. Drexel specifically has total assets of approximately $2.94 billion and a financial endowment of $1.13 billion according to their own financial disclosures. If they can't make it work, I'm not going to shed a tear for the museum.
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u/Paper-street-garage 1d ago
That and people are too lazy and addicted to screens to actually go out and learn something.
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u/Dullahan-1999 22h ago
They can’t make it work because they’re busy blowing grants on redoing the sidewalks for the 50th time in a row.
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u/LandscapePenguin 1d ago
Isn't it more likely that they subsidize SOME datacenters and not all and that likewise they subsidize SOME museums but not this particular one?
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u/me_myself_ai 1d ago
Ah yes, such a large and important museum. Say, which state is it in, again? What kinds of stuff do they have there, other than what’s in the cover photo of this post?
The Trump admin doesn’t care for education, ofc, but we don’t need to tie in some post-hoc thing about AI. We can tell cause they’re literally closing the department of education as we speak (illegally)
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u/Dullahan-1999 22h ago
Drexel also notoriously has no fucking clue what to spend their money on, how to spend their money responsibly, and what appropriate investments are. Turns out that stating your goal as gentrifying neighborhoods instead of education isn’t a great idea for school leadership/financial management.
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u/angry_dingo 1d ago
donate some money then.
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u/Onebraintwoheads 1d ago
It's connected to a private university and it's being closed because it's not bringing in an acceptable profit margin. Donating money is what Drexel University wants, but its practices suggest the money will not go to the museum or change the museum's fate.
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u/Cranialscrewtop 1d ago edited 1d ago
Here is some context for you. Drexel is itself a non-profit; the museum is a non-profit; there is no universe in which any such museum operates at a profit, and all of them - including the Smithsonian - survive only because of either govt. support and/or private donations. The term "profit margin" does not exist in this space. Likewise, you make an unsubstantiated and highly unlikely claim that there is some subterfuge about fundraising for the museum. The statement is unambiguous that the museum is closing.
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u/TwoTequilaTuesday 1d ago
Drexel is itself a non-profit; the museum is a non-profit; there is no universe in which any such museum operates at a profit
"Non-profit" doesn't mean they don't make a profit. Non-profit status is a tax status and means donors can claim donations as an exemption, and the organization can apply for grants. For any non-profit to keep operating, they need positive revenue, which is another way of saying "profit."
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u/Cranialscrewtop 21h ago
Again: this is incorrect. Virtually no scholarly museum operates at what you are calling "positive revenue'. All of them lose money and couldn't possibly survive without significant donations. But your idea seems stuck in your head so there it is, really.
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u/TwoTequilaTuesday 20h ago
I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.
Significant donations are part of a revenue stream. We're not talking about how a museum makes its money, we're talking about a museum needing a positive cash flow to operate. And that's called a "profit." So it doesn't matter how it makes its money, as long as there is more coming in than going out. Revenue streams consist of money from a number of different sources including admissions, sales of merchandise, membership programs, grant funding, donations, etc.
And having founded a 501c 3 non-profit myself and worked for two fairly large ones, I know what I'm talking about.
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u/Cranialscrewtop 16h ago
If you want to redefine terms after the fact, go for it. I responded to this unambiguous statement made out of words with an accepted meaning: "It's connected to a private university and it's being closed because it's not bringing in an acceptable profit margin."
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u/TwoTequilaTuesday 16h ago
I haven't redefined anything. Positive cash flow is positive cash flow. It's more money coming in than going out. If you got hung up on the semantics of the words "profit margin," I think you're arguing the wrong point. All businesses, even non-profits, must operate with more money coming in than going our or they won't be in business. It's exactly that simple.
It doesn't matter where the money comes from. There just needs to be more of it than what is spent.
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u/angry_dingo 1d ago
Donating money is what Drexel University wants, but its practices suggest the money will not go to the museum or change the museum's fate.
That's the real problem.
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u/_-Moonsabie-_ 22h ago
You could build roughly 12,000 large Berlin libraries like the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre for the $1 trillion being invested globally in AI data centers in a single year.
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u/COMOJoeSchmo 22h ago
Would 12,000 large libraries hold as much actual information as even one data center?
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u/OCCULTGOBLIN 18h ago
Damn, just imagine being this braindead.
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u/COMOJoeSchmo 17h ago
Digitizing every book ever written would require between 50 petabytes and 1 exabyte based on estimates.
So yes, one data center has the potential to hold more information than 12,000 libraries, and also to make that information accessable virtually anywhere in the world as opposed to those in a few fixed locations.
Libraries may be far more aesthetically pleasing, but as far as being repository and distribution centers of knowledge, data centers are far more efficient.
In fact, you just used a data center to call me braindead. Where do you think networks that "live in the cloud" actually exist?
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u/OCCULTGOBLIN 17h ago
Right on, technochud.
Libraries don't destroy the environment.
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u/COMOJoeSchmo 17h ago
But they do. How many trees would be cut down and ground cleared to build 12000 libraries. What's the carbon footprint for the construction and maintenance of 12000 large buildings? How many trees are cut down and turned into paper to make that many books? To distribute that knowledge, how much fuel is burnt to travel to and from 12000 libraries to check out and return books?
We're not talking about one library vs one data center. That wouldn't make sense, we're comparing the footprint it would take to house that much information.
So yes, if you did all the math I would say that many libraries would probably do much more environmental damage than one Data center.
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u/Big-Classroom2217 16h ago
I mean go visit the damn museum,l. When I was a kid I remember seeing aquariums and museums packed with people, it's like a ghost town when I visit now
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u/cash8888 23h ago
Can we get a billionaire to buy it and keep it as is like come on? There’s gotta be at least one decent one.
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u/AltForObvious1177 21h ago
>Drexel University's endowment stands at approximately $1.13 billion, with a total investment portfolio reaching roughly $1.25 billion when including the endowment and assets for the Academy of Natural Sciences
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u/bluecat2001 18h ago
Those two things don’t have anything in common. Unless a DC will be built on top of the museum.
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u/CreepyOldGuy63 1d ago
If people were interested in the museum they would visit it and it wouldn’t have financial trouble.
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u/SoRosenberg 22h ago
There’s plenty of tax dollars for the essential services. Problem is there are too many pet projects for this or that group.
Government should handle the core essentials and nothing else.
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u/Ash_Cat_13 20h ago
I feel like in the early 2000’s there was a chance for the US to really do some good……..
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u/Turbulent_Account_81 1d ago
They're looting and destroying the entire country before they flee to another country. It should never have gotten this far, trump is going to leave our country dried up and dead before he leaves the country with billions in American taxpayer's money. People need to stop working, fill the streets and shut down everything demanding their removal.
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u/Nobodyspecial2222 1d ago
It’s probably costing the school millions in up keep. A reason why school is expensive….
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u/RMSTitanic2 1d ago
The first step on the road to authoritarianism. Rewrite history and twist science and reality to fit the party narrative.
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u/Dazzling_Comfort5734 1d ago
Terrible shame. If my heath improves, we’re going to get over there again this month before it’s closes.
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u/Gravuerc 1d ago
Are you kidding me! This is absolutely terrible news!
I have been to this museum on multiple occasions and never thought I would see the day that it would disappear, we really are living in the worst timeline.
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u/cgrimm25 23h ago
Maybe nothing will fundamentally change Joe was not a good decision and why we are in this mess now?
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u/PurpleCoat6656 1d ago
When are we going to build the polar bear pits? The polar bears hunger for nazi flesh, but mostly they're just hungry. Save the polar bears, save this country! Put it on PPV, I would love to watch Trump shove Bannon or Miller towards a hungry white bear.
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