After Brazil museum fire, debate over how, or if, to rebuild

AP
Ever since a fire gutted Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the question has been: Could what was destroyed be restored?
A flicker of hope emerged last week when an emergency mission from the U.N. cultural agency held out the possibility that some objects had survived the Sept. 2 blaze and outlined a plan to rebuild the museum and its collection by repairing damaged pieces, soliciting donations and even creating replicas of lost artifacts using 3D technology.
But the prospect of a new museum rising from the ashes has sparked a debate about whether the institution can, or even should, be reconstructed. International experts warn there are limits to any such effort, emphasizing the inescapable loss of original, irreplaceable objects, while some in Brazil question the rush to rebuild before the wholesale neglect of the museum has been examined.
While it is heartening to see global experts rushing to Brazil’s aid, when “I hear people talking with extreme optimism about this issue, I cannot help but think that they don’t quite understand what was lost,” said Marcus Guidoti, a Brazilian doctoral candidate who used the museum’s collection in his research.
In a world where memories are constantly being backed up to the cloud and experts warn that data never truly gets deleted, museums are among the last “bastions of authenticity,” said Vincent S. Smith, head of the Diversity & Informatics Division at the Natural History Museum in London.