Lost to Fire: The African Collection of the National Museum of Brazil

In the evening of September 2, 2018, residents of São Cristóvão, a popular neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro’s suburb, spotted smoke in the horizon near the lush municipal park of Quinta da Boa Vista. Later that evening, a stream of text messages, telephone calls, and television reports confirmed their fears: the National Museum was on fire. Upon notification, the city’s fire department rushed to the place only to discover that the neighborhood’s fire-hydrant system did not have enough pressure or water to power their hoses. Some of the museum’s researchers and staff also appeared on the scene and, with local assistance, braved the flames in a risky and desperate attempt to salvage whatever they could before the fire consumed everything. The fire’s intensity, however, grew quickly over the night and turned the museum into an impenetrable raging inferno. Due to social media and other means of communication, Brazilians everywhere stood horrified, watching their oldest and one of their greatest museums burning to the ground. Firefighters eventually managed to control the fire but, by the morning, all that remained were the museum’s walls and a few fire-resistant artifacts, like the Bendegó Meteorite, which crashed on the Earth’s surface thousands of years ago.

The National Museum of Brazil was initially conceived as a natural history museum. However, over the years it amassed a huge collection of ethnological artifacts, thanks in part to a series of directors trained or very interested in anthropological studies. The institution itself was created by decree of June 6, 1818, about ten years after the Portuguese royal family landed in Rio de Janeiro, escaping Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Portugal. It was originally named the Royal Museum. After independence in 1822, it changed its name to the Imperial Museum, according to the new form of government adopted in Brazil, headed, ironically, by the heir of the Portuguese crown. In 1889, following the proclamation of the republic, the institution gained its most recent name, the National Museum, and moved from a building in downtown Rio de Janeiro to the Palace of St. Christopher in the Quinta da Boa Vista Park, far from the city’s cultural center. The transfer was, however, a clever and strategic one. The palace had been donated by Elias Antônio Lopes, a wealthy slave trader, to the Portuguese royal family, which used it as its court and primary residence throughout much of the nineteenth century (Soares 2015: 23). The museum’s transfer had thus the dual purpose of providing more space to its collections while at the same time erasing, or at least diminishing, the country’s historical ties to Portugal, the royal family, and the imperial government.

Given its relatively long history, the museum accumulated a small but exquisite collection of African artifacts. Thanks to the diligent work of scholars including Mariza de Carvalho Soares, Michele de Barcelos Agostinho, and Rachel Correa Lima, we have fairly accurate knowledge of the extent, nature, and relative importance of the museum’s African collection. In 2003, the Brazilian federal government issued new legislation enforcing the teaching of African history as well as Afro-Brazilian culture at public and private schools throughout the country (Presidência da República do Brasil 2003). As a result, institutions such as the National Museum, which was administratively subordinated to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, took the opportunity to review its African collections and reorganize their exhibits. Mariza de Carvalho Soares, then a history professor at Fluminense Federal University, led the process at the National Museum by invitation of its directors and staff. This effort culminated in an entirely new exhibit, launched on May 14, 2014, titled Kumbukumbu: Africa, Memory, and Patrimony (Museu Nacional 2014).

The vast majority of the museum’s ethnologic collection consisted of artifacts created by the indigenous populations of Brazil. However, out of a total of approximately 40,000 artifacts cataloged, some 700, compiled under the name “National Museum Africana,” were brought from different sub-Saharan African regions between 1810 and 1940 or were made...