Africa-Press – Angola. The Dundo Regional Museum, in the province of Lunda-Norte, lacks staff trained in museology, archaeology, anthropology and natural history, to meet the expectations of visitors, as well as guarantee the preservation of the collection.
The information was provided this Wednesday, in Dundo, by the director of the aforementioned institution, Samuel Minerva, who stressed that the situation has already been reported to the relevant ministry and that a resolution is awaited.
According to the director, the museum currently has eight employees, a number that is too few to cover the ten existing exhibition rooms and meet the number of visitors, which varies between 50 and 70 per day.
He stressed that, as a rule, each room should have a security guard to monitor the collection, and that for the museum to function properly, at least 40 employees are needed, including administrative staff and specialists.
On the other hand, he said that the institution continues to be concerned about the deterioration of the museum collection, due to the lack of specific products such as formaldehyde and alcohol for the treatment and conservation of some anatomical pieces. He said that until 2018, the museum had more than nine thousand museum pieces, but that number has now fallen to seven thousand, due to the poor state of conservation of many pieces. He said that it is necessary to complete the storage areas and exhibition rooms, whose construction has been halted for many years due to financial issues, in order to accommodate the collections.The museum, which has been in existence for over 100 years, helps society identify historical events that were decisive and essential for the construction of the Lunda “Empire”.
To help preserve memories and, at the same time, explain them to those interested, the institution has a collection full of ethnographic, biological, archaeological, sacred and popular art articles and collections, as well as some objects related to the history of the Industrial Revolution, such as diamond mining.
The ethnographic collections of the Dundo Museum are the main component of the institution’s corporate purpose and are the result of the first collection campaign, known as the Camaxilo expedition, carried out in the distant year of 1937, and the Upper Zambeze expedition, in 1939.
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