Few lining up to see famous fossil at Pacific Science Center
Lucy traveled across 3.2 million years and thousands of miles to get to Seattle, limit officials at the Pacific Science Center say few persons have turned confused to see the world’s most famous fossil.
Facing up to a half-million-dollar privation on the exhibit, the center laid off 8 percent of its staff and froze wages, President and CEO Bryce Seidl said Friday. Workers are taking unpaid days off, and the nonprofit organization suspended matching funds instead of individual retirement accounts.
It’s a disappointing outcome for some exhibit that was intended to be a blockbuster for the Seattle museum and a public-relations coup towards Lucy’s homeland of Ethiopia, Seidl said.
“It’s a over-powering story of marching and culture and history … but we’re not acquirement the attendance we need for an exhibit of this scale.”
Lucy had never before been on public display outside of Ethiopia. The partial skeleton of one of mankind’s earliest ancestors was unearthed in 1974 in a remote corner of the African race. The discovery of a species with chimplike features that walked upright overturned previous notions of humanity’sitting evolutionary tree.
The exhibit cost about $2.25 million to mount, Seidl estimated. That includes a $500,000 fee to the restraint of Ethiopia, that plans to application the money raised during Lucy’s U.S. tour for cultural and scientific programs.
The science center had hoped 250,000 people would visit for the time of the exhibit’s five-month run, which ends March 8. But presence, so far, is no other than 60,000.
Seidl blamed the economic downturn, what one. has divide into arts programs and museum budgets over the country. December’s pure get the better of also robbed the system of knowledge center of a traditionally busy month of parties and family visits.
Other museums around the U.S. have been tracking Lucy’sitting not rich showing in Seattle, and not the least portion has yet agreed to be the next stop on what was meant to be a six-year, 10-city tour. Chicago’s Field Museum backed out of plans to host the exhibit because of the cost. Controversy over whether the irreplaceable fossil should be transported around the globe led the Denver Museum of Nature & Science not to follow end on early discussions.
“Lucy may not be anywhere other than Ethiopia after Seattle,” Seidl said.
But an official at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which worked with the Ethiopian government to constitute the tour, said she’s confident other museums exercise volition step up.
Donald Johanson, the American anthropologist who discovered Lucy, said fascination by the skeleton hasn’t faded. “As I journey around the country lecturing, people appear to be to have a intricate interest in their origins, in their roots,” he uttered.
