Adele Nelson News Today

WE ARE NEARING the five-year anniversary of the fire at Brazil’s Museu Nacional that devoured nearly twenty million artifacts. By now, we know the immediate and semi-immediate causes of this anthropological, archaeological, and artistic catastrophe, from the inappropriately installed wiring that led to the short-circuiting of an air conditioner, to the lack of sprinklers, to the systematic neglect (under the banner of austerity) of Brazil’s cultural institutions, to the global warming that n...