Stop the Illinois State Museum closures!

As part of his budget maneuvering, Governor Bruce Rauner is threatening to close the Illinois State Museum in Springfield and all branch sites, including Lockport Gallery, Dickson Mounds, Rend Lake Arts Center, the Thompson Center Gallery and the Springfield Research and Collections Center. These closures would seriously damage a key component of our state’s cultural and historic heritage, while doing nothing to address the state’s serious fiscal woes.

Museum staffers represented by AFSCME curate exhibits, design educational programs, and maintain the collection of more than 12.5 million artifacts in six facilities across the state. Last year alone they logged 386,750 visitors, including 2,300 teachers and 40,000 schoolchildren. Closing those sites would mean the loss of some $33 million spent by those visitors in the Illinois economy each year.

Closing the museums would also cut off researchers’ access to important collections, in areas like botany, geology, paleontology, anthropology and zoology, which are used to study critical issues such as human impacts on the environment. And it would risk the preservation of Illinois’ unique archive of Native American artifacts, including skeletal remains and other sacred object that are governed by written agreements with a number of tribes.

The few dollars saved by closing the six museums would be trivial compared to the state’s loss in educational opportunities, tourist dollars and important research capacity. Call Governor Rauner at 217-782-0244 or 312-814-2121, and use the AFSCME legislative hotline at 888-912-5959 to contact your state senator and representative as well. Tell them you oppose any Illinois State Museum closures. Then click here to sign a petition opposing the closures.