20M historical artifacts destroyed in Brazil National Museum fire
cnet.com
cnet.com
I walked there, it's about half a mile from the Maracanã Stadium, as you can see on the picture here [1] (in portuguese). As I passed by the stadium, I distinctly remember large banners bragging that over 700 million reais were being spent to renew the stadium. That was about $300m at the time, a truly outlandish ammount in brazilian reality.
I then visited the museum, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and took note of the fact that an entire wing was closed "for indeterminate time". I asked the staff and the reason was, obviously, budget cuts. I took another few years, just after the government secured reelection in 2015, that the government let the gravity of the fiscal situation surface, by which point there was no coming back from a 5-10 year long economic and political crisis that is still unfolding.
With regards to the museum, it should be noted that it was operating on a reduced annual budget, receiving only 60% of the 550,000 reais (less than $150k) allocated funds from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro [2]. If these numbers sound like a pittance, it's because they are. I will not be surprised if this fire was started by something as simple as an electrical malfunction of an old circuit that should have been replaced decades ago.
It really saddens me to see this news, that museum was something very unique for Brazil, but I'm not surprised. Brazil has been running on life support for two years now and I think the situation will continue worsening for a few more years. I was thinking the country would stave off becoming a second Venezuela, but the government and politicians seem set on running everything to the ground. I'm not holding my breath for our presidential elections, which are happening next month. I am sure that nothing other than sad words and perhaps some political opportunism will come out of this incident, and that no serious efforts will be done to learn from this situation and prevent similar ones from happening in the future. Unlike the US where there is serious inquiry and learning when bad things happen, the brazilian modus operandi in any such situation is to say "oh what a tragedy", turn a blind eye to root causes, and go on as usual. I am very glad I got out of Brazil to pursue graduate studies in the US, and I truly hope never to have to go back.
[1] https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2018/09/02/mu...
[2] https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2018/09/02/mu...
I'm glad you got to visit the museum before it was destroyed.
Years later it turned out that some originals were put up for auction since they were alive and well in some private collections. Many times the original is not displayed for the public anyway and a very good copy is used instead. So someone in the museum got money for selling the originals while the copy was still on display, then got money from the insurance, with the fire covering up everything perfectly (either by accident, or for the insurance money, or to cover up the fact that the originals went missing).
Of course this would just confirm the corruption or poor maintenance arguments.
Could you expand on this, or maybe give an example?
I don't know when it started but it's part of the government's culture now. It's common knowledge too: people talk about institutionalized corruption openly, citing investigations, comments by officials and even judges. It's a systemic problem and I have no idea what people are supposed to do in order to fix something like that. It's very demotivating and demoralizing.
This is actually a huge reason why lots of people want the military dictatorship back. The logic is (1) the military cares about Brazil and believes in the country's potential, and (2) they will do whatever they believe is necessary to make the country great, regardless of any individual's interests. Our history with dictatorships doesn't quite validate that logic, obviously.
That's an exaggeration. Brazil is nowhere near becoming a second Venezuela. The current crisis would have to keep on for at least another 20 years before that, which is extremely unlikely.
Regular life in Brazil continues as usual (unorganized), despite the crisis and it's been getting a bit better lately (not enough to fix the last 4-6 years of economical depression). It's still far away from being Venezuela.
Interestingly, Brazil has had experience with hyperinflation between 1980-1994 when the currency was the cruzeiro. The story of how Brazil got out of inflation by introducing a "fake currency" called the URV (Unidade Valor de Real) is the stuff of economic legend [1], but it worked and today there's is the Brazilian "real".
Venezuela's situation is much different -- dictatorship, oil dependency and handouts.
Brazil, bad as it is, has a democracy (broken and corrupt notwithstanding), more industries than just oil (Petrobras not withstanding), and has had investments in higher education and technology (Embraer). Sao Paulo as a city is economically far more advanced than Caracas (and indeed, Rio de Janeiro). Brazil is also a lot bigger than Venezuela, with many big multinational companies like Vale, Embraer, etc. The Brazilian 3G Capital also owns Burger King and Kraft Heinz.
There is hope in Brazil. Much more than in Venezuela.
[1] How Fake Money saved Brazil https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-...
Lol, all money is "fake" nowadays - the amount of physical currency in circulation is basically irrelevant.
Whether they printed banknotes right away or not, they effectively changed currency, which is a typical way to exit hyperinflation. Brazil "just" managed to execute the transition very well on a psychological level. Venezuela is trying it now, using crypto as their anchoring.
I honestly can't remember a country ever exiting hyperinflation by any other mean, they all end up ditching the original currency in one way or the other.
The change from shekel to new shekel was a 1000x redenomination, done after inflation was under control, reflecting the way people already talked about prices (in thousands).
This is different from the sense of 'ditch' in the previous conversation, which meant that the old currency became suddenly worthless.
I'm really sorry for all Brazillians.
This is on par with The Smithsonian or the British Museum burning to the ground. It's where Brazil's Declaration of Independence was signed and it was the residence of the Portuguese Royal Family for decades.
While the closest fire station is 500 meters from where the fire happened, and the National Museum is located in front of a lake (in a place called Quinta da Boa Vista), they had issues accessing their water supply - for which they are the entity responsible - and whole areas of the wooden, termite-infested museum burned while they tried to sort the water supply out.
The museum was in disrepair for several years, with the media reporting on it repeatedly, but their govt budget for 2018 was a mere $13,500. Since 2010, it was the fourth important Brazilian museum to be burnt down due to fire (or rather, lack of a proper fire prevention system).
Not from the article, but important to emphasize:
"The museum of Quinta da Boa Vista had the largest collection of Egyptian mummies outside of Egypt, the largest collection of Pompeii outside of Italy, the mummies of the American civilizations, the fossils of Luzia, the oldest homo sapiens ever found in Brazil. Largest meteor to ever fall into the country. A huge collection of dinosaur fossils."
And, finally, I'll add that the museum was where physical evidence of new species was mandatorily catalogued. It's a loss for so many other branches outside history, like biology.
A short circuit caused a massive fire at another big museum in Brazil in 2015, the Museu da Língua Portuguesa[1] in Sao Paulo.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_the_Portuguese_Langu...
The director's statement that everything has been lost seems rather pessimistic. There must be some sort of digital catalog of what was present in the museum that'll preserve it in some form.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-b...
This is still useful data, for example knowing that a species used to be present in a particular area, but if a specimen is destroyed then in the absence of a photograph of the specimen (and sometimes that's not enough) the original assertion can no longer be verified.
https://www.gbif.org/publisher/4205110f-3f0f-40d8-bd0f-2fa71...
(I work at GBIF, so I know this data exists, but otherwise I know nothing more than the article covers. I do not know what proportion of the total biodiversity collection 270,000 is, whether they were stored in this building, or whether there are images of them. As one example, they estimate 550,000 plant specimens, but share data of 42,000. That might well mean it isn't electronic, or it might mean it exists in a database but isn't yet shared as open data.)
I'm somewhat optimistic about the fossils too --- which are pretty much rock already, so relatively heat-resistant.
Even if they could survive the heat, most of the roof collapsed and at the moment the fire still is out of control...
I wouldn't count on it...
Also, you would expect museums to have digital catalogs of their collections, but that's not what happens in countries like Brazil.
I'm a Brazilian living in Europe and only when I moved I could see all the "basic" things we don't have. Access to art and culture in Brazil is something awful.
I'm not sure a some random commenter on HN can pretend to have a better perspective on the situation than the director of the museum himself.
The other reply to your comment mentioned the Library of Alexandria. If the library wasn't there to store all the books/scrolls, and they were instead scattered around, how many of them would've survived to the modern day?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The obvious answer is to ensure that we have as many backups as possible, in various locations. One of my tasks for the next few months is to backup all my important files (mostly photos), so that I have a copy at my house and a copy on the cloud. Then I'm also going to burn them to archival DVDs and send the DVDs to my parents' house, which is in another country. That way, if I somehow lose all my different backups, I've got much bigger problems (e.g. global disaster, nuclear war, etc).
[0] https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitZoom/mw115...
Seriously, what would be better? We already struggle to get people interested in these large places, which are so interesting, and now we should try to get people interested in hundreds, some of which would only include niches?
I'm sorry to hear the news but let me keep this bit: "As of writing, no deaths or injuries have been reported."
That's how much people care. It's sad.
If you have someething of worth, you have a responsibility to take care of it, and, if you cannot take care of it, then ensure it gets into the hands of someone who will.
I think we can imagine many reasons why folks who aren't motivated to fund the museum wouldn't be willing to swallow their pride.
That said, I wonder if there's a role for a global museum rescue organization. It could be funded by anyone who wants to help and their role could be to go in to troubled museums and help out.
It seems to me that this might touch on cultural sensitivities however. People might be scared that foreigners are coming in and will steal their artifacts.
That's not often the case. These museums were built to house these collections, and often include rooms full of drawers, compacting shelving etc with the collected objects. This incudes the basement, but not only the basement.
For example, the Natural History Museum in London has "the majority" of their 80 million specimens stored in the museum in London.
You may be able to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of your local museum.
What they did by centralizing the collection was the best thing they could do to save it, but apparently they didn't even have money to protect a single museum from fire hazard. Spread the collection around the country and you don't even have money/people for proper maintenance and protection against theft in each individual location.
In any case, the strategy they chose obviously didn't work and they lost it 100%.
The strategy didn’t work since any strategy was likely deemed for failure due lack of funding, not because it was suboptimal.
If the likelihood of a fire starting in a non-residential building is roughly proportional to the square footage of the building, then you'd have roughly the same total number of fires across all buildings but 1/N of the collection destroyed each time.