Is there any real point to museums anymore? We have the internet and AI. Education technology can do better than "a big building with lots of obsolete information".

>>5164048
Dude i can smell the cow shit from here

>>5164044
Closing to the public doesn't equal closing in general. The museum isn't primarily there for the public and the public is secondary to its actual purpose.

>>5164048
Capitalists must be hanged in public by their entrails. It's proven to be the only solution to this kind of behavior.

>>5164053
The president just wants to sell off all the fossils and artifacts to private collectors for a quick buck.

I grew up down the street from it, currently live within walking distance, OUAT lived just behind it and worked directly across the street from it and I've never been to the place once unless it was school mandated. It's neat, I guess, and it's a shame they've run out of visitors and funding but my guess is that it was inevitable.
I'm hardly unique in any way (except my memory; ask, if you want to) so I would guess that if I didn't care despite it being near omnipresent in my life since moving to Philadelphia in the 90s, many, many other people didn't care either and no amount of crocodile tears will prove otherwise. Look, the oldest library in the US is across the street, starting as a Netflix-like subscription service in 1731 (that's where I used to work), and it has a museum collection of antiquities and rare books not generally open to the public. Stuff is there but you can't go see it. Drexel's ANS closure is hardly any different now, I'm afraid.

>>5164057
>The president just wants to sell off all the fossils and artifacts to private collectors for a quick buck
Retard

I never know here if you guys are actually retarded or just trying to get attention. Either way congratulations on not choking on your toast this morning

>>5164060
Death to your family.

>>5164057
No, the collection is staying put because it's not a government owned museum. The vast majority of museums aren't. For example, the Philadelphia museum of art is up the street. The building is government owned but the collection is owned entirely by the museum corporation itself while loaned exhibits are owned by their lenders. The government have no say in the collection and they do not charge rent for the museum corporation to stay there
The ANS, however, is a different story. The building AND collection are both owned by Drexel University. Because Drexel own the building, they're liable for the taxes, the utilities and so on to keep it running. Without funding, they can't afford the taxes or the operating costs.
They've turned down a public/private partnership to nullify tax and I don't quite know why. The PPP system that the art museum works under has been nothing but a blessing for it so in refusing that proposal, Drexel have shot themselves in the foot.
To give you an example, the Rosenbach foundation (literally around the corner from where I grew up) faced similar financial straits in the early 2010s and reached a PPP with the city and library system, the terms of which are as follows: as a subsidiary of the library, the Rosenbach becomes a public owned entity. The building becomes public property so taxes and utilities are covered by the city. However, like the art museum, the foundation retains complete control of its collection, which includes the original, hand-written manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses among other rare books. As such, it continues to operate to this day.
I have no idea why Drexel didn't take the same deal when they could.

>>5164044
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University museum is closing its public galleries on September 30, 2026, primarily due to financial challenges and a drop in visitor attendance following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reasons for the Closure
Financial Strain: Rising operating costs and visitor numbers that never fully recovered after the pandemic placed heavy financial pressure on the institution.

>>5164057
Resource Realignment: Owner Drexel University stated that closing the physical museum allows them to protect the massive 19-million-specimen collection and concentrate limited financial resources on core scientific research and academic assets.

>>5164063
Future Plans and Community Pushback
Research Continues: While the public museum and galleries close, the institution's underlying scientific research and care for its historical collections will continue inside the building.

Public Outcry: Community groups, local leaders, and a volunteer campaign called Save the Academy have pushed back against the shutdown. They highlighted an unaccepted funding offer from the William Penn Foundation aimed at keeping the museum doors open for at least another year, and Philadelphia City Council members scheduled hearings to pursue alternative options.

>>5164048
>compromised images on the internet - aka a world of illusions and deception - is better education than face to face interaction with actual specimens
Please fucking kill yourself.

>>5164224
You sound like a faggot.

>>5164224
>actual specimens
They generally keep the actual specimens in back rooms where they can be studied.

What the public sees is a carefully curated mix of real material and imaginative reconstruction. It's entertainment, or interpretation. And it's mostly aimed at children or the extremely uneducated. People that know real specimens from fakes and reconstructions are going to be disappointed with most museum displays

>>5164240
>And it's mostly aimed at children
yeah...that's how you ensure the next generation gets interested in these things. how you ensure that there will be people in the future to study the specimens they have in storage. retard.

>>5164250
Apparently that's not working if museums are closing to the public for lack of visitors. Same problem amusement parks have. You can't just appeal to children. Adults are the ones that choose what kids do.

>>5164224
No actual specimens are shown at these museums, those are all sold to private collections then rented out for research.
Everything in museums are fakes. Like the recent controversy that the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian is actually a reproduction made of glass, and they have no idea where the real one is.

>>5164259
Same problem 4chan has. All the real posters were sold off to other websites so all you have left are schizophrenics and retards. And nobody is paying to see that shit.