More information about Museum Conference

On September 2nd, 2018, the National Museum/UFRJ in Rio de Janeiro was the victim of a major fire. The museum was the most important of its kind in Latin America, with a collection of around 20 million objects - including artefacts from long-extinct indigenous groups and the last surviving records of their languages. Since the fire, the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut have supported the National Museum in its rescue work and in developing a concept for a new museum.  

On 2nd and 3rd June, 2022, the Goethe-Institut and the Museu Nacional/UFRJ, together with several museums and cultural institutions and with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office, held the Museum Conference in Rio de Janeiro. The conference aimed in particular to develop concepts to prepare museums of Natural History and Ethnology for the future in difficult times. The central themes of the conference were "Museums in the tensions of society", "Collections and Archives" and "Sustainability".

The project aimed to create time and space for a sustainable exchange of knowledge between museum professionals from South America and Europe. More than 50 institutions participated, including representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany and Uruguay, as well as indigenous representatives from Brazil. Before and after the conference, international cooperation and exchange projects between museums took place in the form of workshops, webinars and publications.

Meetings between the experts took place at the Museu de Arte Rio (MAR) and online.