Smithsonian wants to grill more hot dogs. Congress should grill the Smithsonian.

The first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Henry, once noted that “narrow minds think nothing of importance but their own favorite pursuit.” More than 150 years later, that advice is unheeded at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Congress needs to step in.

The museum is pursuing headlong its plan to tear down the Samuel C. Johnson IMAX Theater, the nation’s premiere venue for showcasing films about the natural world. In its place, the museum’s leadership has a grand vision of an utterly unscientific pursuit—that of expanding its cafeteria in order to make more money selling fast food to visitors, including the millions of school children it hosts each year.

{mosads}This represents a troubling detour from the scientific and educational mission of the Smithsonian, which receives 70 percent of its funding from taxpayers. The giant screen films shown on the Johnson IMAX theater’s six-story screen immerse audiences in the wonders of the natural world, enriching the museum going experience and inspiring children to learn about natural history in a way that cannot otherwise be provided. 

Thousands of scientists, teachers and ordinary citizens have voiced their displeasure with the Smithsonian through an online petition, on Facebook, and with letters to the museum. The museum’s director, Dr. Kirk Johnson, has ignored these calls, planning to close the theater on Sept. 30 so that demolition may begin. That the Smithsonian would swing a wrecking ball at this educational powerhouse in order to sell more hot dogs and pizza is mystifying. No one visits a museum for its culinary fare, and there are clearly other ways to expand the cafeteria without destroying a pillar of the Smithsonian’s educational programming. 

Even more disturbing is that the Smithsonian simply doesn’t know if any of this makes financial sense. These are scientists, not financial experts, who are embarking on a project that has the potential to come back to the American public asking for a bailout.

We’ve heard the false and oft-repeated assertion by the museum that the theater is a “losing proposition” and that attendance has dropped off “dramatically.” But the truth is that attendance has grown over the past three years, from approximately 265,000 tickets sold in 2014 to 310,000 last year.

This growth has been in spite of the museum’s surprising attempts to sabotage attendance, which it did by drastically reducing the signage and promotion of the theater and its films from the main rotunda, making it nearly impossible for visitors to include a film in their visit without knowing in advance that the theater exists. In short, the museum made a decision to cut the theater off at the knees, and then claim that attendance was going down. This despite the museum director stating recently that he continues “to make our visitors aware of the theater and its offerings online and onsite”.

After failing to manage the most important venue for natural history films in the world, the museum’s leadership wants us to believe that they will somehow be better restauranteurs.

The museum has claimed publicly that demolition and construction of the cafeteria will cost $16 million, despite not having issued any request for proposal (RFP) to construction companies or furnishing any engineering plans. We’ve asked, repeatedly, and been met with obfuscating silence. And that’s where Congress comes in.

The largely taxpayer-funded Smithsonian is overseen by Congress. Congressional leaders sit on its illustrious Board of Regents. To date, there has been not a peep of inquiry about the costs and financial viability of this massive undertaking, nor any serious questioning of the claims that the theater is a losing proposition. Whether or not elected leaders enjoy soaring over mountaintops or diving into the deep blue sea in IMAX grandeur, surely they take seriously their commitment to our children’s education and their fiscal responsibility to ensure that that taxpayer money is not squandered on an ill-planned restaurant.

The Smithsonian is about to take on millions in construction debt while destroying one of the most successful educational theaters in the country, and taxpayers must not be the ones left holding the bag when hot dog sales are down at the new cafeteria. Furthermore, there remains the important—and unanswered—question of how the original construction bond for the construction of the theater will be paid off, especially when the institution is going to incur major new capital costs.

All of this could be dealt with in a simple way: Congress needs to start asking questions and demand answers from the Smithsonian in order to protect the public from losing one of the gems of its natural history programming and having to pick up the tab for this poorly planned, opaque, vanity project spearheaded by “narrow minds blindly obsessed with their own pursuits.”

Taran Davies is co-founder of Cosmic Picture, and Jonathan Barker is CEO of SK Films, produce IMAX films about the natural world. They lead the campaign to stop the destruction of the Natural History Museum’s theater, “Save Our IMAX.