thechanelmuse:Brazil museum fire: ‘incalculable’ loss as 200-year-old Rio institution guttedBrazil’s
thechanelmuse:Brazil museum fire: ‘incalculable’ loss as 200-year-old Rio institution guttedBrazil’s oldest and most important historical and scientific museum has been consumed by fire, and much of its archive of 20m items is believed to have been destroyed.The fire at Rio de Janeiro’s 200-year-old National Museum began after it closed to the public on Sunday and was still raging during the night. There have been no reports of injuries, but the loss to Brazilian science, history and culture is incalculable, two of its vice-directors said.It wasn’t immediately clear how the fire began.“It was the biggest natural history museum in Latin America. We have invaluable collections. Collections that are over 100 years old,” Cristiana Serejo, one of the museum’s vice directors, told the G1 news site.Marina Silva, a former environment minister and candidate in October’s presidential elections said the fire was like “a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory”.The museum was part of Rio’s Federal University but had fallen into disrepair in recent years. Its impressive collections included items brought to Brazil by Dom Pedro I – the Portuguese prince regent who declared the then-colony’s independence from Portugal – Egyptian and Greco-Roman artefacts, “Luzia”, a 12,000 year-old skeleton and the oldest in the Americas, fossils, dinosaurs, and a meteorite found in 1784. Some of the archive was stored in another building but much of the collection is believed to have been destroyed.Read more -- source link