On Sunday 2 September, the biggest natural history museum in Latin America, the Brazil National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, was destroyed by fire.

The global science centre & museum community, represented by the Science Center World Summit, published a declaration to express its deepest condolences and concern for the destruction of the Brazil National Museum. This declaration was signed by science centre networks worldwide.

"The fire took away a fundamental legacy of anthropological and natural history of Brazil and of the world: 200 years of work and 20 million specimens," the declaration states. "This irremediable loss is striking an underfunded national museum and acts as a sad reminder of how crucial it is for public authorities to dedicate appropriate resources to the preservation of cultural and scientific heritage. It also highlights the importance of scientific research, of collections as witnesses and memory, and of the access to knowledge as a human right."

How can you help?

Consult the museum's website for different ways to help.

In parallel, citizens have launched a call to collect images of the building and its collections via Wikipedia Commons: "One of the most immediate challenges is to recover and preserve images of the museum building and its collection, as our visual memory of these items is now our main asset. Anyone who has visited the museum and taken photographs of the buildings and its objects or someone who knows another person who has taken photographs can help".