Weekend storms resulted in additional damage to the Reading Public Museum’s Arboretum with a tree collapsing and destroying “gateway” signage at the southwest corner of the property. The seemingly never-ending weather damage to the Arboretum continues the conversation among The Museum Foundation’s leadership regarding the survival of The Museum at its current location, which is owned by the Reading School District, but funded and managed by the Foundation for the Reading Public Museum. The signage, originally funded through a grant from the Wyomissing Foundation, has been removed from the property and will not be replaced before next spring. Fortunately, an adjacent sculpture, by Washington D.C. artist Carol Brown Goldberg was undamaged by the falling tree.
This continuing damage to the Arboretum is no surprise to Foundation officials as the property has been hit hard by storms in recent years, with each new incident resulting in additional costs to the Foundation. Thunderstorms in 2019 caused massive flooding of the property, including on the main level of the museum building and inside the Neag Planetarium, and similar events occurred again in 2021. While flooding from the Wyomissing Creek has been the primary cause of recent damage, this summer an electrical storm resulted in The Museum being forced to close for two days due to a transformer failure after a lightning strike. Replacement of the transformer had been planned prior to the outage, but changes to electrical codes have resulted in the project’s cost skyrocketing to more than $600,000. Identifying funding for that project continues to be a point of discussion between the Foundation and the Reading School District.
According to the Foundation’s Board Chair, Charles Harenza, who also chairs the Building and Grounds Committee, “This latest damage is another example of how maintaining what is essentially a public park with private dollars detracts from the main mission of The Museum, as funding budgeted for educational programs and exhibitions must be diverted to repair the damage that nature continues to inflict.” Although the Arboretum was created when The Museum relocated to its current site from downtown Reading in the 1920s, funds for its care and upkeep were never endowed and the property is largely maintained by the Foundation and a dedicated group of volunteer gardeners under the guidance of Foundation staff.
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