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— "You can’t just throw a museum away," former staffer says
by Rachael Robertson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today
November 26, 2025 • 3 min read
The CDC’s museum hasn’t yet closed for good, but former long-time employees told MedPage Today that its future is indeed uncertain.
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate located at agency headquarters in Atlanta, has been around for nearly 30 years. However, it’s been closed since a shooter opened fire on the CDC in August, and there’s no clear timeline as to when it will reopen.
On top of that, several museum leaders retired earlier this year and others were caught up in agency layoffs. The museum doesn’t currently have a director, though a former museum supervisor is temporarily running the show, according to the former employees interviewed by MedPage Today.
However, that person is expected to retire later this year, they said.
In addition, some people who work at the museum are contractors whose agreements may expire soon, they added.
Former employees said it would be a great loss for the agency if the museum foundered.
The museum launched in 1996, during the 50th anniversary of the CDC — which coincided with the 1996 Olympic games, held in Atlanta. To give the public that was gathering in the city a better idea of the agency’s work, organizers collected some artifacts to display in its old lunch room.
It was originally called the Global Health Odyssey Museum, but was renamed in 2011 to honor David J. Sencer, MD, MPH, the longest-serving CDC director, who led the agency from 1966 to 1977. In the later years of his career up until his death in 2011, Sencer became passionate about the museum and would show up to help every day, often answering historical questions, former employees said.
“We finally gave him a cubicle and called him the division of institutional knowledge, because he knew so much,” said Judy Gantt, MEd, who became the CDC museum’s first director in the mid-1990s — a role she held until she retired in February of this year. “He loved the museum, and he loved the history of CDC.”
In 2005, the museum moved to a bigger space with room for more exhibits, where it stands today.
One of its permanent exhibits is the Story of CDC, which details how the agency grew from its early days in malaria management through some of its biggest accomplishments, like smallpox eradication. Past exhibits included COVID-19, the health effects of 9/11, a 30-year celebration of the Vaccines for Children program, how the HIV/AIDS epidemic unfolded, and topics in health equity.
One of the museum’s most popular programs is Disease Detective Camp, a week-long summer program for high school juniors and seniors that’s been going on since 2004.
“We’ve trained thousands of high school students to be disease detectives,” Gantt said. “Many of them have gone on to work at CDC, which is so fabulous.”
Gantt said most visitors are from colleges or schools, but notable figures from the government, international groups, and even Stephen Hawking, PhD, have paid the museum a visit over the years.
Current and retired CDC employees volunteer to be docents, giving guided tours in several languages.
“The work of CDC has been awesome,” said Louise Shaw, MFA, a CDC museum curator for 23 years until her retirement this past February. “It was a privilege to interpret it to the world who came, whether they came from China or Atlanta.”
Mary Hilpertshauser joined the museum in 2001 and was tasked with creating a database of all collections and artifacts. The collection has ballooned to more than 20,000 objects, ranging from papers and small artifacts to a working pediatric iron lung. She also launched the museum’s oral history program in 2008.
“There was always so much work to do, because people retired almost every other day, and with them, they took these amazing stories,” she said.
After decades of being a contractor, Hilpertshauser was transitioning to becoming a full-time CDC employee and was in the probationary period when she was caught up in the Trump administration’s mass layoffs earlier this year. She never got to wrap up her years of work, and she worries what would happen to the museum’s collection if it were to be shut down.
Hilpertshauser noted that many of the pieces on display have legal agreements attached to them. “You can’t just throw a museum away,” she said.
