International Museum Conference Rio de Janeiro
3 and 4 June 2022

The National Museum in Rio de Janeiro suffered a major fire on 2nd September 2018. Since then, the German Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut have been supporting them in their salvage work and the development of a concept for a new museum

The National Museum was the most important museum of this kind in Latin America, with a collection of about 20 million objects – including artefacts of long extinct indigenous groups and the last surviving records of their languages.

The Goethe-Institut and the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, in collaboration with numerous museums and cultural institutions and supported by the German Foreign Office, are organising an International Museum Conference in Rio de Janeiro. In particular, the hybrid conference aims to develop concepts that prepare museums of Natural History and Ethnology for the future in difficult times. The central themes of the conference are: “Museums and society”, “Collections and archives” and “Communication, international networking, and sustainable structures”.

Prior to the conference as well as during the event itself, bilateral workshops on these main topics will be held between the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and German museums as well as other partners from the museum landscape. The workshops will be conceptualized and conducted by the following tandems:

• Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• Linden-Museum Stuttgart I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• Museum für Naturkunde Berlin I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• Ethnologisches Museum Berlin I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• ICOM I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin I Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro