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As much as 90% of the collection was destroyed on September 2nd 2018 when a fire struck the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.
An estimated 20 million pieces were lost, including indigenous artefacts, dinosaur remains and the oldest human skeleton ever discovered in the Americas.
At the time, the Presidential candidate Marina Silva described the fire as ‘a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory.’
While little can be done to restore the artefacts lost in the fire, Google Arts & Culture hopes that the collection can live on. Google Arts & Culture had begun working with the museum in 2016 to bring their collection online and capture its interior through Street View imagery and online exhibits.
Now through high-resolution photography, photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning, and virtual and augmented reality you can virtually step inside the museum and learn about its lost collection on Google Arts & Culture.
With the click of a mouse, you are transported to the museum as it once stood. High-resolution photographs offer 360-degree views of both the artefacts and the galleries they once inhabited.
Chance Coughenour, Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture said, ‘Even though images cannot replace what has been lost, they [advances in technology] offer us a way to remember’.
Image Credit : Shutterstock
