Priceless art lost at Rio’s National Museum after huge blaze
Brazilian President Michel Temer pronounced Sunday as ‘a sad day for all Brazilians’ after the country lost priceless works of art in a huge blaze.
The 200-year-old National Museum in Rio de Janeiro was gutted by a fire.
"Two hundred years of work, investigation and knowledge have been lost," Temer said, while investigators try to assess the full extent of the damage and loss of artworks.
It housed millions of artefacts as one of the most important museums in Latin America.
One official said as much as 90% of works could be lost, despite workers scrambling to remove items from the blaze.
The museum is part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and has long been known as a potential fire hazard due to years of under-funding.
"We recently finalized an agreement with BNDES bank for a massive investment, so that we could finally restore the palace and, ironically, we had planned on a new fire prevention system," said museum vice-director Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte.
Its vast collections included ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman art, fossils, and cultural relics from home and overseas.
"It’s a national obligation to reconstruct it from the ashes, recompose every eternal detail of the paintings and photos. Even if they are not original, they continue to be a reminder of the royal family that gave us independence, the empire and the first constitution and national unity," said Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella.
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