Brazil’s museum fire is a global tragedy
As was the case with many of the great museums in the 19th century, it built its priceless collections through at times violent and brutal means
There have been no injuries reported after an enormous fire gutted Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum last week, but the toll was still immense. Officials suggested as much as 90 per cent of the museum’s collection — encompassing about 20 million objects — was destroyed by the blaze. Some of the museum’s treasures may have survived, including the remains of Luzia, an 11,500-year-old fossil believed to be the oldest human skeleton unearthed in the Americas. But the fire probably consumed countless other pieces of Brazil’s patrimony: Dinosaur bones, ancient mummies, recordings of extinct indigenous languages, myriad artefacts that predated the arrival of Europeans and even temple frescoes removed from the Roman city of Pompeii and transported across the Atlantic. Their graceful images of peacocks and coiled dragons withstood the eruption of Mount Vesuvius two millennia ago, but they may now be lost.
Curators and academics are struggling to come to terms with the scale of the disaster. For some, it meant the disintegration of a career. “In terms of [my] lifelong research agenda, I’m pretty much lost,” said Marcus Guidoti, a Brazilian entomologist, to National Geographic. The museum’s collection of lace bugs — the world’s largest — and the rest of its five million arthropod specimens were all probably destroyed.
For others, it means an immeasurable blow to Brazil’s cultural memory. “We Brazilians only have 500 years of history,” anthropologist Mrcio Gomes wrote on Facebook. “Our National Museum was 200 years old, but that’s what we had, and what is lost forever.” According to my colleague Alex Horton, Gomes likened the event to the burning of the great library in Alexandria, Egypt in 48 BC.
Numerous museum employees reportedly rushed inside the building while the fire raged, hoping to rescue what research they could from their work stations. The National Museum, the largest of its kind in Latin America, is an artefact of history itself. The 19th-century palace that was its main building was once home to the Portuguese royal family and a short-lived Brazilian imperial dynasty. It was the site of the signing of the country’s independence decree in 1822 and the birthplace of one of its emperors. And, as was the case with many of the great museums in the 19th century, it built its priceless collections through at times violent and brutal means.
This year, the museum was preparing to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founding. Now university students in Rio are collecting photos taken by visitors to build a mournful virtual memorial to the objects once housed there.
Reports point out that the building’s sprinkler system was not functioning properly; firefighters had to dredge water from a nearby pond because the hydrants by the museum did not work. Brazilian President Michel Temer promised to raise private and public funds to help restore the museum and rebuild its collections. But museum officials point to a long legacy of budget cuts and neglect. “Brazil is a fantastic country, a beautiful country, but it is blighted by the lack of education,” Brazilian author Paulo Coelho lamented in the Guardian. “Poor people in Brazil do not go to school, let alone to museums. Rich people go to museums — but in London, New York or Paris, not in Rio or Sao Paulo.”
Others are clinging to thin reeds of optimism. As workers searched the wreckage of the museums, they discovered that another iconic treasure, an ancient iron meteorite discovered by an 18th-century Brazilian cattle herder, had survived the flames. “I’ve been inside, there are places where we can retrieve some things,” museum director Alexander Kellner said. “We still do not know what, but I have hope.”
■ Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for Washington Post.