Self-Guided Visits
Planning a future visit? Check out our offerings below!
Take your students on an exciting exploration of the natural world. Our three floors of exhibits, ranging from dinosaurs and dioramas to hands-on interactive stations, are sure to make your field trip to the Academy the highlight of the school year.
Special Exhibits
November 16, 2024–August 31, 2025
Experience The Ecology of Fashion, the first-ever, co-created exhibition by Drexel’s Westphal College and the Academy of Natural Sciences.
Featuring stunning and provocative garments from Drexel’s Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection — heralded as a “world-class collection of fashion and textiles” by The Wall Street Journal — as well as specimens from the Academy of Natural Sciences and works by contemporary change-makers, the exhibit boldly shows how materials, production processes and our own patterns of clothing consumption impact the world around us.
September 28, 2024–May 4, 2025
Explore paleontology’s final frontier in Ice Dinosaurs, the Academy’s exciting new special exhibit. Transport yourself to the Late Cretaceous period in the Arctic Circle, where dinosaurs actually lived year-round in extreme polar environments. This brand-new, immersive and educational experience brings this era to life with animatronic dinosaurs, engaging stories and real fossils, skeletons and museum casts.
Follow a family of Troodons —large, feathered raptors — and discover how they survived, made nests, hibernated, hunted and cared for their young, all in a place that experienced darkness for half the year. Investigate the changing geography of ancient snow-covered lands with interactive maps. Explore fossils and casts to learn about the real force of dinosaur’s teeth, the size of their eggs or how they burrowed in icy terrain. And of course, marvel at the magnificent life-like moving creatures!
Signature Exhibits
Dinosaur Hall
Explore the exciting world of paleontology, stroll beneath towering fossil skeletons, and examine dinosaur anatomy up close.
NEW! Chaperones, download our Dinosaur Hall Scavenger Hunt! Answer key located here.
Dioramas of Africa, Asia, and North America
Travel the globe without leaving the museum! Our ever-popular dioramas let students get nose-to-nose with gorillas from Africa, pandas from Asia, and bison from North America. Chaperons may also find the following exhibit guides useful: Africa and Asia Diorama Hall Activity Guide and North American Journey.
Science at the Academy
Find out what Academy scientists are up to these days in this multimedia exhibit. Watch video footage from research expeditions, see recently collected specimens, and find out about our latest scientific discoveries.