The heritage of humanity
As I write this, staff members are combing through the remains of the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, destroyed by fire on September 2. Some risked their lives to save precious objects while the inferno still raged. Founded in 1818, the museum contained some 20 million objects, representing the biological, geological, archeological, and historical heritage of Brazil. The loss to the people of Brazil is incalculable and irredeemable, but the damage is also to humanity as a whole. The legacy of knowledge contained in the collection belonged to all of us. What is especially upsetting is that the destruction was predictable. The museum suffered from decades of neglect and lacked any kind of fire suppression system. It is infuriating that the cost of properly maintaining the museum was a tiny fraction of the huge sums spent on the recent Olympic games. The Olympics lasted a few weeks; the museum is older than Brazil itself and should have survived for centuries more.
The loss of the National Museum in Brazil is just the latest in a recent series of irreparable injuries to our shared heritage. The National Museum of Iraq was looted and heavily damaged during the 2003 war. The same has happened to the National Museum of Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion during the 1990’s. And of course the so-called Islamic State has destroyed many ancient sites in Syria.
Similar destruction, albeit on a much smaller scale, once happened in Chicago. The original building, collections, and library of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, the oldest museum in the city, was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The Academy rebuilt and its current collections are an invaluable record of our natural history, including the remains of species long lost from the Chicago region. They are unique evidence of environmental change in our region.
All of our museums, both great and small, are storehouses of the heritage of our area, the nation, and the world. The Field Museum is far more than the eye catching (and revenue generating) displays of dinosaurs; out of sight are the vastly larger collections that document the scope of human awareness of the natural world. Unlike the National Museum of Brazil, these collections are physically well protected. In the United States, the threat to our natural history museums is not fire or flood, it is the erosion of the knowledge base possessed by curators, the specialists in the contents of the collections and their scientific value.
Natural history museums across the country are having financial difficulties. Some smaller ones have closed; others have cut staff. In 2001 The Field Museum had 39 curators; the current number is 21. Some of the Field Museum’s problems are of its own making; but a large part is the loss of government support. Support by the city has dropped from $7.4 million in 2000 to $6.3 million in 2011 to $5.4 million this year. This number has not changed since 2013. That is a lot of visitors needed to make up the loss.
Similar declines in curatorial numbers have occurred at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. The Chicago Academy of Sciences has a collections manager but no scientific curator. The loss of curators means that while the collections may be maintained, there is no one to add to, update or fully utilize them. A just published study suggests that there 23 times more fossil localities recorded in museum collections than appear in the published literature (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/09/04/dark-data/#.W5KLZbgnZaQ). I strongly suspect that the same is true for insects, plants, birds, and all of the other items tucked away on museum shelves and in cabinets. Without adequate staff, these objects, termed “dark data,” will never be described. And in case of disaster, their story will be lost forever.
Our museums are the direct physical record of the physical, biological, and human world over time. They are also the first exposure to the wonders of science for many children. And they remain a source of wonder and beauty for adults. They deserve and need to be supported and protected.
More where this came from
This story is published in Noteworthy, where thousands come every day to learn about the people & ideas shaping the products we love.
Follow our publication to see more product & design stories featured by the Journal team.
