National Museums

Museum Digs Out a Future from Charred Scientific Ruins

Brazil’s tragic fire sends a wake-up call to neglected national museums worldwide

• By Richard Conniff on September 6, 2018

Drone view of Rio de Janeiro's treasured National Museum, one of Brazil's oldest, on September 3, 2018, a day after a massive fire ripped through the building. Credit: Mauro Pimentel Getty Images

With the hollowed-out shell of their old building standing in ruins nearby, and its history-rich contents in ashes, staff and scientists of Brazil’s National Museum met Wednesday morning for the first time since Sunday’s fire to begin to piece together a future—one suddenly bereft of a vast assortment of items from Brazil’s natural and cultural heritage, which explorers and researchers had collected and preserved over the museum’s 200-year history.