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On September 1, 2026, Drexel University and the Academy of Natural Sciences announced a closure after nearly two centuries of operation. Within 48 hours, Philadelphia's mayor and governor had mobilized. Milwaukee's museum transition has been underway since 2014, with the building closing January 3, 2027, and demolition scheduled for 2028. Neither the Governor's office nor the Mayor of Milwaukee has stepped in. SaveMPM asks why—and what happens next.

Philadelphia is losing its dioramas. Not by choice — by attrition. On September 30, 2026, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will close its doors to the public for the last time. Among the exhibits closing with it: 37 wildlife habitat dioramas, most built between the 1930s and 1960s, spanning three floors of the museum. Milwaukee is also losing its dioramas. Not by attrition — by decision. Milwaukee Public Museum holds more than 100 Milwaukee Style hab

Most visitors assume the Rosetta Stone in Crossroads of Civilization is just another reproduction. Few realize it has a quiet 70-year history at MPM, or that its origins may be more remarkable than museum staff currently understand. This investigation traces the artifact from the Library building's Egyptian Room (1956) through five exhibit homes, and explains why high-fidelity casts of the stone matter to scholarship worldwide.

When does a museum artifact become a "prop"? When a label says so—but labels aren't titles. MPM Inc. has classified its reproduction of the Rosetta Stone as "MPM, Inc.-owned," but without acquisition records, purchase documentation, or a bill of sale, that classification proves nothing. This post traces how the definition of "Personal Property" shifted from 2013 to 2025, and why Milwaukee County needs to exercise its Section 5.9 inspection rights before historically significa

For decades, the Milwaukee Public Museum sold visitors postcards of its murals — captioned "Milwaukee Public Museum Mural." Those same postcards are now evidence. Match them against major auction house listings from the last dozen years, and at least two full-scale MPM murals quietly left the museum and resold for tens of thousands of dollars. George Peter worked at MPM for nearly three decades and likely painted dozens of large canvases in that time. That raises the real que

The journey toward Living Oceans began in 1965, when Curator William E. Dickinson published his vision in the Milwaukee Public Museum's staff magazine, Lore. Seven years later, the exhibit opened—and remained largely unchanged for fifty years. SaveMPM explores what made it work, how it was built, and what the institutional commitment to a single immersive space tells us about the museum that made it.

Carl Akeley created the modern habitat diorama for Milwaukee Public Museum in 1890. The technique survived two building moves. This time, the new museum is replacing it with computer-generated imagery and projections—a simulation of the technique, standing in for the technique itself.

Before the wrecking ball moves, Milwaukee County owes its taxpayers a straight answer: would you say yes to millions to save this museum?

Milwaukee invented the habitat diorama format in 1890. The American Museum of Natural History preserved theirs in 2010, treating them as irreplaceable cultural artifacts. The museum where it all began is now dismantling roughly 150 of its own dioramas—with no public accounting of what's being kept, moved, or lost. Why the different approach?

In October 2025, SaveMPM submitted a records request asking for itemized acquisition documentation. It remains unanswered. Now, as pre-sales begin, we're publishing three cases: a studio-cast Rosetta Stone replica from the 1930s–40s, Edward Moll's hand-built Ramses Temple (8,000 hours of public labor, ~$250K–$333K value), and a Dead Sea Scrolls model purchased in 2010. None fit the contract's definition of "personal property."

A rare thylacine specimen remains in Milwaukee Public Museum storage with no publicly disclosed plan for its future. As the museum prepares to leave 800 W. Wells Street, the public deserves answers.

Milwaukee Public Museum built A Tribute to Survival through five years of direct tribal collaboration. It opened in 1993 to national recognition. Now it's being abandoned—not for ethical reasons, but perhaps because representation isn't the real constraint. Part 3 of the Diorama Preservation Series examines the contradiction at the heart of MPM's claims about Native American exhibits.

People keep asking SaveMPM the same question: what's so special about the Porteus mini-dioramas? Fair question—MPM has never really explained it. This post unpacks why this 55-piece collection is a meaningfully different case than the life-size dioramas driving national museum reckonings, and why the Milwaukee Public Museum's complete silence about its post-move disposition is troubling.

In 1996, Iziko South African Museum mounted "Miscast," a public exhibition confronting the colonial diorama that would dominate institutional debate for the next two decades. By 2017, the museum had published peer-reviewed scholarship, documented community disagreement, staged public interventions, and held formal ceremonies marking the space's colonial history. Sixteen years of transparent process. MPM Inc. has been asked twice on the record about the Porteus dioramas and an

A 2014 article on the removal of Indigenous dioramas from natural history museums nationwide may explain something SaveMPM has been asking about for a year: why MPM Inc. won't say a single specific word about the fate of the Porteus Mini-Dioramas.

Long before the closure debate, a small team of painters, sculptors, and taxidermists spent decades building Milwaukee Public Museum's dioramas by hand. A digitized 1986 staff feature — presented here as a flip-through book — names them.

A 200-year-old diorama from Suriname sold at Christie's for £11,875 and hangs in the Rijksmuseum's "100 Masterpieces" series. Milwaukee Public Museum's own Porteus dioramas — built for the public, already proven to survive a relocation — are treated as disposable. We put the two collections side by side.

In 1973, a Milwaukee Journal reporter got backstage access to exactly how MPM built its dioramas — sugar for snow, paper for leaves, fiberglass Masai figures light enough to balance on one iron bar. Fifty years later, that record isn't nostalgia. It's evidence of a craft the Museum is now being asked to walk away from.

Congress is holding hearings on the Smithsonian for the exact rhetoric MPM's own leadership used first — "culturally incompetent," "scientifically inaccurate," "white Eurocentric." Nobody held a hearing for us. Here's how those same characterizations, paired with escalating cost estimates, built the case to demolish a 140-year exhibit tradition without ever being audited.