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The National Museum has one million pieces to compose future collections. These are collections of botany, vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as a library with 500 thousand books.
They were not in the palace, and therefore were not destroyed.
#MuseuNacional
They were not in the palace, and therefore were not destroyed.
#MuseuNacional
Cristiana, one of the vice directors of the museum, said that much of the researches was saved, since departments had backed up the material, and one of the servers was not damaged by the fire. #MuseuNacional
People who are trying to blame the museum staff for what happened should watch the interview some of them gave yesterday, crying and explaining how much they begged the government for money. Brazil is a country where absolutely nothing works, and many professionals...
THREAD: I just got an update from one of the #MuseuNacional's curators, Débora Pires, on the current status of the collections. Here's what we know has been lost, what we know has been saved, and what's still unknown. #LutoMuseuNacional 1/
The entire entomological collection, some 5 million specimens, has been lost. They were in the palace, the main building. 2/
The entire arachnology collection has also been lost, as has much of the mollusk collection. However, 80% of the mollusk holotypes (the specimens that formally serve as the global reference for a given species) survived. 3/
The 150-year-old library with nearly 500,000 books (some of them very rare) was not reached by the flames and is safe. #MuseuNacional
The herbarium, vertebrate animals from the research collection, part of the collection of invertebrates, the main library, and the meteorite are safe too.
Nearly everything else (90%) was destroyed.
Nearly everything else (90%) was destroyed.
Firefighters found a skull amidst the rubble, which may be Luzia, the 11,500-year-old human fossil. Experts are analyzing it at the moment.
Some dinosaur bones survived as well.
Some dinosaur bones survived as well.
Many paintings
The artifacts that belonged to other cultures, such as the Egyptian mummies, were not “stolen”. They were all donated to the imperial family in the 1800s.
(It’s crazy that I need to explain this)
I am not sure we will ever be able to process the loss of Brazil's #MuseuNacional. It's not only a loss of specimens, documents, artifacts; it's the loss of future discovery and knowledge, not only by scholars examining the collection but by visitors sating their curiosity. /1
Many people consider #museums "attics"--the @smithsonian, for example, is the US's "national attic." When a museum sells a "beloved" artifact there's always a hue and cry about it. Think, for example, of Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" and the recent case of the Berkshire Museum. /2
"Attic" assumes dust, neglect, nostalgia, even an amnesia to be restored through discovery. #museums /3
