Works of the State museums didn’t have insurance – Diário de Notícias – Lisbon

This is the rule for works such as the sculpture “Archangel St. Michael”, who on Sunday suffered an accident in the Museum of Ancient Art

“it Is a rule of the museums dependent on the central administration: the parts do not have insurance stand-alone, therefore the State secure their own parts. The State secure in itself. It is this standard that there is for all of our heritage. As the responsibility, of course there has to be an analysis, a weight, sure it will be done. If there are responsibilities that have to be imputed for sure that they will be. I doubt that there is. Gives the idea that it is in the figure of an accident,” says Raquel Henriques da Silva.

The former director of the Portuguese Institute of Museums and the Museum of Chiado – National Museum of Contemporary Art responded to the DN, the purpose of which occurred on the last Sunday in the National Museum of Ancient Art (MNAA): a tourist who was shooting another work, walking back to do, just by knocking down the wooden sculpture, the Archangel St. Michael, which dates from the XVIII. THE work was exposed on top of a plinth, protected around the perimeter by a raised platform, and the fall turned out to do with that if they will release “the wings of the Archangel and the feathers of a shot of the helmet in the military”.

“The works are only safe when they go out to some loan. And, then, as soon as they leave your site is made a insurance nail to nail, or may be, provided that they leave until they return to their proper place”, he remembered yesterday, the deputy director of the MNAA, José Alberto Seabra Carvalho, on the day he was issued a press release on the part of the museum and of the Directorate-General of Cultural Heritage (DGPC), which has the guardianship, reaffirming that “the recovery of this work is possible, but it will require the Museum to the constitution of a multidisciplinary team”. This team, said Seabra Carvalho to the DN, will be constituted “in part by technicians of the museum, in part of technicians of the Laboratory José de Figueiredo”, which belongs to the DGPC.

“What is the State budget that it was a safe, permanent, annual, for the panels [of São Vicente de Fora] Nuno Gonçalves or to the Bosch [Temptation of st. Anthony, recently loaned by the MNAA from the Museum of the Prado]? We have to play in the security of the museum, in compliance with the highest standards of security in the museum, and to trigger the insurance if there is any announcement of risk: imagine that there is a situation of an impending earthquake, or a war,” says Henriques da Silva, stating that the logic of the State if you hold on to yourself “is common to the vast majority, if not all, the museums of Europe”.

Minister announces more vigilant

When the accident Sunday was made public, many recalled the statements of the director of the MNAA, António Filipe Pimentel, at the end of the summer, when this, referring to the lack of means of museum – “Are 64 people for 82 rooms open to the public,” warned: “One of these days there is a calamity”. For the former director of the Portuguese Institute of Museums, “no one is going to be in bad faith, you can connect the two things. An accident and these can happen in a room with guards. This accident does not happens because there is little surveillance. It happens because it happened. It is an accident.” Still, Henriques da Silva reaffirms that there is a problem of lack of resources in museums the Portuguese government. Problem against which the minister of Culture promised yesterday that in 2017 there will be an increase of 37 watchers in the museums. The MNAA, guaranteed Luís Filipe Castro Mendes to the Public, “it wil l have a reinforcement of three vigilant”, jobs are “at this point in the contest”.

Remember that the MNAA is the second most visited museum in the country, between those who are governed directly by the Ministry of Culture. Affluence increases on the first Sundays of the month, as was the case on the day of the accident, in which the entrance is free of charge.

As for the visitor who knocked down the sculpture, the deputy director of the MNAA considers that “this is not an intentional act, there is no vandalism, just there is no crime, from this point of view.” However, he adds: “But this being an accident he had as a motor action, I don’t know if it can be imputed to the visitor some burden because of what happened.” Seabra Carvalho says that the museum stayed with the identification data of the visitor, “for the case of him having to be contacted”, but does not know if the DGPC contacted you.

Source from the ministry of Culture told the DN that the “legal question is being examined”. However, both the ministry and the museum referred the matter to the DGPC, which yesterday, up to the time of closing this edition, it is not clarified if it may be a consequence of some burden to the visitor. This, according to learned Seabra Carvalho, “it was incomodadíssimo” and “wept” when of the occurrence. As for the restore, the protection states that the costs will be mainly “in working hours”. Seabra Carvalho, in his turn, noted that this intervention “is not dispendiosíssima: it is not a drop of the Eiffel Tower.” Closed Mondays, the museum is back open to the public.