Please Touch Museum president Patricia Wellenbach will step down in 2025

On Thursday, Patricia Wellenbach, president and CEO of the Please Touch Museum, announced that she will resign in early 2025. The board will launch a nationwide search for a new president this year, aiming to announce the hire by the end of this year. Wellenbach will remain onboard to support the leadership transition.

“It’s been a job that I have loved since day one, and I’m deeply proud of everything that we have accomplished as a museum and as a part of our city and the community of West Philadelphia,” said Wellenbach, 66, in an interview with The Inquirer.

Her departure comes amid contract negotiations with the Please Touch Museum employees’ recently formed union and ahead of the museum’s 50th anniversary in 2026.

In the last decade, the popular children’s museum in West Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park has survived bankruptcy and a pandemic closure under Wellenbach’s direction. After the museum moved out of Center City in 2008, it incurred $60 million in debt and filed for Chapter 11 in 2015. Initially hired as an adviser, Wellenbach was brought in to save the nonprofit institution, which she achieved through significant fundraising and using reserves from the organization’s 2006 bond sale, ultimately paying $11.25 million to shed the debt and exit bankruptcy.

After becoming president in March 2016, Wellenbach spearheaded new initiatives to attract bigger and more diverse audiences with an eye toward expanding programs for older kids up to age 8.

When she got there in 2015, Wellenbach said, “probably about 15 percent of the attendance was from children who were from marginalized families and communities, now that number is about 30 percent.”

The museum organized its first Pride Family Festival in 2018 and though it faced backlash from conservatives, Wellenbach defended the successful event. In 2019, Please Touch Museum hosted the landmark exhibition, “America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far,” inviting Philadelphia’s large Muslim community and kids of all backgrounds to explore Islam’s local and global impact. Other programs include free admission community days and Play Without Boundaries, aimed at kids with autism.

Wellenbach’s momentum stalled once the pandemic forced the museum to close for more than a year, resulting in a loss of $6 million in revenue. The museum laid off most of its staff, slashing the workforce from 71 to 18 employees.

Even before COVID, employees voiced concerns about Wellenbach’s leadership.

In 2021, Billy Penn reported that 17 ex-employees and one former museum trustee said Wellenbach created a hostile work environment that led to high turnover and low morale. From 2016 to 2019, 13 high-level staffers left and employees repeatedly petitioned the board to intervene, with little luck, according to the investigation.

“That’s a long time ago now,” says Wellenbach about the report. “We continue to work on our commitment to be a place of belonging for everyone, and that includes our employees. I think that we have done a very good job in listening and learning.”

The museum now has 80 employees.

In 2023, Please Touch Museum staffers voted to form a union, joining workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Penn Museum as part of Philly’s chapter of Cultural Workers United, with the goal of improving compensation and instituting policies to address discrimination and harassment.

Museum management has recognized the union and contract negotiations are underway. “We’ll support what the employee community is looking for, to the best that we can,” said Wellenbach.

Wellenbach says the museum is in great shape for an incoming leader: It’s out of debt and seeing visitors return in droves. Annual visitorship is in the mid-400,000, nearing pre-pandemic numbers that saw 500,000 visitors.

She believes this is the right time for her to step down so that the next president can lead the museum into the future and organize the celebrations for its 50th anniversary in 2026. The organization also just announced the start of a $4.2 million renovation to replace flooring throughout the historic Memorial Hall building in preparation for 2026, which will mark the hall’s 150th anniversary.

“School, family, and museum — this is the ecosystem around a young child. It’s the strength of those three that guarantees the highest potential being realized in each child,” said Wellenbach. “We have a lot of work to do, but we’re not going anywhere.”