SCHENECTADY — The Museum of Innovation and Science will close if it fails to find a new home.
That was the unmistakable message from Gina Gould, director of the museum known as miSci, and Neil Golub, chair of its board, when I met with them on a recent morning. That's an alarm that should shake the region into action.
Here's the problem: The building's basement is suffering from irreparable structural and hydraulic issues that within two or three years will put the museum's substantial and valuable archives at risk. Golub and Gould say they'll be forced to move the archives to other museums and close miSci if a workable solution isn't found.
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That would be a massive loss.
Already, this region is suffering from a relative dearth of museums and family attractions relative to other areas its size. Schenectady's miSci, for all its charms, is relatively small and should be a launching point for a more significant science museum. Its shutdown would represent a grim step backward.
The museum's archives, meanwhile, are a hidden treasure trove consisting of 15,000 consumer artifacts, mostly from General Electric, and nearly 1,000 boxes of company papers and advertisements — materials that draw roughly 400 researchers annually from around the world. The archives testify to this region's history of technological innovation, and it would be more than a shame to have them scattered to museums around the country.
The archives make miSci unique and are key to its future. Indeed, Golub and Gould noted that the museum is in the process of launching a traveling exhibit program that will take its materials around the country — and, presumably, generate a profit for an institution that has been on shaky financial footing pretty much since its founding in 1934.
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"That was the one thing we could come up with that could really help this organization," said Golub, the retired CEO of Price Chopper supermarkets. "We need to save this place, and we're busting our butts to try to do it."
Late in 2023, miSci nearly arranged to leave Schenectady for a move to Kiernan Plaza, the former Union Station building in downtown Albany. The museum would have occupied most of the building's 80,000 square feet of usable space, dramatically boosting miSci's visibility and giving this area the prominent science museum it deserves.
Yes, losing miSci would have been a blow for Schenectady. But the regional economic benefits could have been substantial.
The vision, Gould told me, was for a museum that would marry the region's historical innovation, which includes much more than GE, with its tech-focused present and future. It was for an attraction that would have boosted the region's quality of life and appeal while helping to get the region's children engaged with science.
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That vision is still alive, but Kiernan Plaza is not part of it. Ultimately, the building now owned by Redburn Development proved too expensive for miSci. "We couldn't make it work for them," Redburn principal Jeff Buell told me.
As Gould noted, science museums often occupy publicly owned land and buildings or otherwise benefit from taxpayer support. The Buffalo Museum of Science, for example, sits on municipal parkland and is funded in part by both the city and Erie County. The recent expansion of the Strong museum in Rochester, meanwhile, was significantly funded by the state.
Notably, miSci does not benefit from steady or substantial public support, as a check of its 990s makes clear. But such support is probably what's needed to help the museum move from its structure, built in 1969 on former Nott Terrace High School athletic fields near downtown Schenectady. So far, miSci's attempts to engage local and state lawmakers in the effort have not been encouraging.
"In the state of New York, there is absolutely no support for us, and that's a problem," Gould said. "Once a museum goes under, it never comes back, and that's kind of where we are."
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Ironically, Kiernan Plaza was publicly owned through state-run Albany Nanotech until the building was sold to Redburn last year for $1 million. It would seem that with a little foresight and leadership, the state could have reserved the building for miSci's benefit, just as occupying the Lincoln Bathhouse at Saratoga Spa State Park has boosted the Children's Museum of Saratoga.
With that opportunity apparently missed, where could miSci go? Gould said she has her eye on buildings on the soon-to-be-vacated College of Saint Rose campus but added that the museum has not made progress toward securing a location in Albany, Schenectady or anywhere else. The future, in other words, is very much in doubt.
"It would be terrible if miSci were to go extinct because we couldn't find a new home," Gould said. "That wouldn't say much for the Capital Region, would it?"
It certainly wouldn't.
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