The Arizona State Museum has remained closed for more than a year after the Arizona Board of Regents declined to act on a $50 million funding request in 2024. Now University of Arizona leaders say they are pursuing a different path forward.
In September of 2024, the school requested $50 million in system revenue bonds for the museum’s upkeep — including repairs to the electric and plumbing. The board declined to fund the museum at the time, with Regent Gregg Brewster saying “I would rather see us polish the young people of Arizona with $50 to $90 million in state-funded education than I would like to see the UA have to stand up and deliver because the state has ignored this project for years and years.”
The Arizona State Museum is operated by the University of Arizona, but state statute puts the onus of managing the museum on the Arizona Board of Regents.
Located in historic buildings near Old Main, the museum has been part of the University of Arizona since its establishment in 1893. It is home to more than 13,000 years of cultural treasures but in urgent need of repairs.
Now, the university administration is working to reopen the museum in a different building with a plan that does not depend on the original $50 million request.
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Board of Regents approves a fee increase while UA administration explores options
In September, the board approved plans to raise rates and fees by as much as 265%. The fee increases affect anyone conducting projects on Arizona state lands that require cultural resource compliance, including utility companies, public agencies, conservation programs and tribal partners.
“The updated fees help ensure that these highly specialized services are appropriately supported without relying on tuition revenues,” Mitch Zak, a spokesperson for the university, said in a statement to Arizona Luminaria.
The change includes increases for administrative, professional and specialist service rates as well as curation fees — or fees to store archival materials. The increase will not impact museum visitors and the museum has been closed since August 2024.
In 2024, members of the museum council said they hoped the state would pick up some responsibility for remediating the building, but that plan has not moved forward.
“There have been no further developments regarding the Arizona State Museum,” Nick Opich, a spokesperson for the board, told Arizona Luminaria in a statement.
Now, the UA said they’re making plans without relying on any eventual approval of the $50 million request.
“Over the past several months, the university’s facilities management team has been assessing building conditions and developing options. They expect to present a recommendation to leadership by early summer that makes the best use of constrained resources,” Zak said.
Museum council chair, Maura Raffensperger, said the new administration under UA President Suresh Garimella has been very helpful and committed to seeing the museum advance.
“They’re working on it all the time. Is it a very complex issue you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of artifacts and it’s monumental. It’s a monumental task,” Raffensperger said. “The direction that the current administration is taking is very positive.”
A three-building solution
Improvements to the former museum building —known as the North Building or Raymond H. Thompson Building — have been halted because of a lack of funding from the board of regents. But, she said, the administration is working on a three-building solution.
Raffensperger said the plan is to open the South Building to the public. But right now, they are looking for a new 40,000 square foot off-campus curation and research facility to house the archeological research collections that are sitting in the former public space.
“The South Building is filled with archaeological repositories which were mandated by law to keep and so we need a storage space for all that’s in that building so that we can open it up as a public space,” she said.
These collections continue to grow, expanding by an average of about 1,000 cubic feet per year.
This relocation will free up the museum’s two existing historic on-campus buildings. These two on-campus buildings will then be rededicated to education and public outreach, providing more space for teaching, exhibits, research laboratories, and multi-purpose rooms for various public programs.
But the North Building still has severe maintenance issues, including original 100-year-old electrical wiring encased in wood and outdated fire alarms and suppression systems.
“While the university has made it a priority to try to get the South Building able to be open to the public again and they have approved certain updates to the South Building, the North Building is still not a priority at this point of the university,” Raffensberger said.
The school has not outlined a timeline and the museum has changed the note on its museum page that a year ago said “we are closed for an extended-temporary period of time (probably 2 years)” to “there is currently no plan to reopen the [North] building.”
Despite conditions in the North Building, Raffensberger said some vaults have protected environments and can be visited through private tours by contacting Darlene Lizarraga, the museum’s director of marketing.
Beth Murfee Deconcini, the museum’s council’s vice chair, said her primary concern is reopening a public space so people can visit all the collections have to offer.
“I run into people all the time who talk about when they were in school, they came to the Arizona State Museum on school field trips, or with their parents, or both and it was an amazing part of their childhood and growing up and their understanding of where they live and and the history and the innovation and the resilience of the people of this state,” Murfee Deconcini said. “The longer we don’t have a public space, the more people will not have that experience.
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