The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the “oldest natural sciences institution in the Western Hemisphere” is broke and may have to sell its minerals and gems collection to keep its library afloat.
Trustees of a cash-strapped 194-year-old natural history museum are selling more than 15,000 minerals and gems that haven’t been displayed for decades to raise money … The academy, which has suffered staff cuts and a string of deficits, will use the proceeds to support its library.
The academy must return to court for permission to sell its remaining 7,000-odd pieces because William S. Vaux, who donated them 123 years ago, requested that they never be sold … Since it is likely that some of the minerals will end up with other museums, some say they are better off being sold and seen than locked behind closed doors. But others have been critical of the institution, which is home to 17 million fossil, plant and animal specimens.
The biggest drawback I see to such a sale is public property ending up as private collection – that fossil may look really nice on display in a living room or gallery, but the rest of the world no longer has that datum to study. What if the Smithsonian Institution had sold off the in-cold-storage Burgess Shale, thus thwarting the discovery of the true faunal variety in the early Cambrian? This is the equivalent of an art museum auctioning off da Vincis and Rodins to pay for books that talk about them.
More importantly, what does this say about the state of science spending in this country when the oldest natural history museum in the west is strapped for cash and has to sell of its own collections? My recommendation is to look at the larger picture and address the degradation of our science and educational history and future.
Come on, geologists, get your schist together, and activate for government support. Or prepare to be irrelevant and jobless.
I share your reaction to having assets become unavailable to researchers. But a cursory search of Academy references shows no active gelogic investigations. And, would the items you are concerned about be of interest to private collectors? Of course you geologists make the big bucks so you could bail them out.
It’s a dangerous legal precedent in the making – how may donors be certain that their material bequests are held in public regard as they were originally intended, and not sold off? As for active geological investigations, that’s why I brought up the Burgess Shale. It was in the dark before a scientist rediscovered the collection and brought to light everything we know about the initial development of multi-cellular organisms.