Rio’s Destroyed National Museum Hopes for Financing From Europe

By Newsfeed/AFP

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Alexander Kellner, President of Brazil’s National Museum, told AFP he would visit Germany and France in search of support after failing to get the much-needed aid in Brazil.

“Our objective is to show our reconstruction efforts and explain how institutions from other countries can contribute,” Kellner said before boarding a plane in Rio de Janeiro.

“This tragedy transcends our borders. It is not just Brazil that suffered. The fire affected collections from other countries.”

Beyond funds needed for the reconstruction of Latin America’s leading natural history museum, the institution needs money to safeguard artifacts rescued from the ashes of the gutted building.

Kellner told reporters earlier this month that the museum urgently required one million reais (about US$250,000) “to be able to breathe”.

After the blaze, the Education Ministry released the equivalent of US$2.5 million for emergency works to preserve the building’s facade. But other public funds have not yet been disbursed.

Kellner said Tuesday the museum was still waiting for a “clear signal from the Bolsonaro government about the reconstruction of the National Museum”.

Kellner plans to meet with representatives of the German and French governments and museums, and visit the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris to “see how the reconstruction is organized and show solidarity.”

Brazil’s National Museum had received the equivalent of US$280,000 in donations, Kellner told AFP previously – a fraction of the more than one billion dollars pledged for Notre-Dame.

The total cost of restoring the National Museum will reportedly be around R$100 million.

In a sad and shocking scene on September 2nd, 2018, the National Museum of Brazil, one of the most significant natural history and anthropological museums in the Americas, was destroyed in a massive fire that consumed the entire 200-year-old structure located inside Quinta da Boa Vista park in Rio de Janeiro.