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, but officials at the Pacific Science Center say few folks have turned out to see the world’sitting most famous fossil.
Facing up to a half-million-dollar loss adhering 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 pensile matching funds because individual retirement accounts.
It’session a disappointing outcome since an offer that was intended to be a blockbuster despite the Seattle museum and a public-relations coup for Lucy’s homeland of Ethiopia, Seidl said.
“It’s a commanding story of evolution and culture and history … but that we’re not getting the attendance we need for single in kind exhibit of this scale.”
Lucy had never before been put on public display outside of Ethiopia. The partial skeleton of one of man’s earliest ancestors was unearthed in 1974 in a remote corner of the African state. The disclosure of a species with chimplike features that walked upright overturned preceding notions of humanity’s evolutionary tree.
The exhibit cost about $2.25 million to mount, Seidl estimated. That includes a $500,000 fee to the government of Ethiopia, which plans to appliance the money raised during Lucy’s U.S. excursion for cultural and scientific programs.
The knowledge center had hoped 250,000 canaille would visit during the bring to notice’s five-month passage, which ends March 8. But attendants, so far, is only 60,000.
Seidl blamed the economic downturn, which has divide into arts programs and museum budgets across the country. December’s snowy weather also robbed the science center of a traditionally busy month of parties and family visits.
Other museums around the U.S. have been tracking Lucy’s poor showing in Seattle, and none has yet agreed to be the nearest 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 above the top whether the irreplaceable fossil should be transported around the globe led the Denver Museum of Nature & Science not to follow through on early discussions.
“Lucy may not be anywhere other than Ethiopia after Seattle,” Seidl said.
But an magistrate at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, that worked with the Ethiopian government to organize the tour, declared she’s confident other museums will progression up.
Donald Johanson, the American anthropologist who discovered Lucy, uttered fascination with the skeleton hasn’t faded. “As I make a tour on every side of the region lecturing, people seem to have a deep interest in their origins, in their roots,” he said.
