LatAm List – On September 2, 2018, Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro burned to the ground, destroying thousands of artifacts and a beautiful neoclassic building, the São Cristóvão Palace. Luckily, in 2017, the National Museum had joined Google’s Arts & Culture program to create 360 degree tours of the top exhibits, preserving many of the pieces in Google’s digital museum.
This week, Google debuted the tours, which are available in three languages and feature the museum’s most iconic artifacts. Google has done the same for over 2000 museums in 80 countries around the world as a part of its arts preservation project.
This project has now become particularly important for Google, as it proves the museum’s ability to generate knowledge and conversation, even with millions of its objects destroyed. The National Museum of Brazil was previously one of the largest natural history museums in the world, holding artifacts such as the oldest skeleton found in the Americas.
Google representatives hope this initiative, which filmed around 50% of the museum, will help Brazil reconstruct the museum and allow the public to continue to enjoy this destroyed facility.
Read more in La Nacion.
