 The neoclassical facade of the museum | |
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| Established | 1888 |
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| Location | La Plata, Argentina |
| Coordinates | 34°54′32″S57°56′07″W / 34.9090°S 57.9354°W /-34.9090; -57.9354 |
| Visitors | 400,000 |
| Director | Analía Lanteri [es] |
| Website | Official website |
TheLa Plata Museum (Spanish:Museo de La Plata) is anatural history museum inLa Plata,Argentina. It is part of theFacultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo (Natural Sciences School) of theNational University of La Plata.
The building, 135 meters (443 feet) long, today houses three million fossils and relics (including 44,000 botanical items), anamphitheatre opened in 1992, and a 58,000-volume library, serving over 400 university researchers.[1] Around 400,000 visitors (8% of whom are from outside Argentina) pass through its doors yearly, including a thousand visiting researchers.
Childhood excursions with his father and older brother led the 14-year-oldFrancisco Moreno to mount a display of his growing collection ofanthropological,fossil and bone findings at his family'sBuenos Aires home in 1866, unwittingly laying the foundations for the future La Plata Museum.
Moreno spent the time between 1873 and 1877 exploring then-remote and largely unmappedPatagonia, becoming the first non-indigenous Argentine to reachLake Nahuel Huapi, what was later namedLago Argentino ("Argentine Lake"), and its imposing glacier (namedPerito Moreno Glacier in his honor). The large body of man-made andpaleontological samples he gathered and carefully classified during this survey (which also led to the first borderdemarcation treaty with neighboringChile, in 1881) led to his establishment of the Buenos Aires Archaeological and Anthropological Museum in 1877.[2]
Internationally respected naturalists such asPaul Broca andRudolf Virchow contributed valuable donations to the institution, which was incorporated into theBernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum. The 1882 establishment of the city ofLa Plata as the new capital of theProvince of Buenos Aires led the provincial legislature to requisition the collection in 1884 for the construction of a new facility set in a north side park designed by renowned urbanistCharles Thays.
The La Plata Museum was inaugurated on November 19, 1888 (the sixth anniversary of the city's founding). As his collections were the core of the museum, Moreno was appointed its first director.[2] As director, Moreno sackedFlorentino Ameghino in 1888, even denying him entry to the museum. In the process of being sacked Ameghino kept part of a fossil collection (gathered by his brotherCarlos Ameghino inSanta Cruz Province on behalf of the museum) to complete its description.[3] Florentino Ameghino's friendSantiago Roth was another early contributor to the museum's paleontological collection. Moreno named Roth as head of the Paleontology Department of the museum in 1895.[4]
Moreno initially struggled to maintain the institution and its collections, a result of sparing legislative appropriations which budgeted for only nine assistants. These limitations helped persuade Moreno to incorporate the museum into the new and growingUniversity of La Plata (today Argentina's second-largest) in 1906. This led to his retirement as director, though by no means of his role as its preeminent caretaker, which occupied him until his death in 1919.
From the beginning the museum's collections drew the attention of the world's anthropological community, attracting numerous visiting international scholars. It earned theAmerican Alliance of Museums' accreditation, as well as plaudits from one of theUnited States' most prestigious naturalists at the time,Henry Augustus Ward, who deemed the museum to be the fourth most important of its kind in the world.[5]
The Museo de La Plata has around 3 million items in its collection, though only a small part of these are on display. The museum's reputation comes in large part from its collection of large mammal fossils from the third and fourth periods of theCenozoic Era, found in thePampas region of northern Argentina.
Argentinetrilobites from theCambrian period andgraptolites from theSilurian are on display, and the museum also haszoological,entomological andbotanic exhibits.
Archaeological andethnographic exhibits from Argentina andPeru are displayed on the second floor. The archaeological collection shows the cultural development of the Americas from theAceramic period (12,800 A.C.) to the time of theIncan Empire and thearrival of the Europeans.
The museum may have modernized its exhibits and added technological mediums, but it still maintains anosteological exhibit with the same characteristics, criteria and concepts that it had near the beginning of the twentieth century. Along with this, the pathway through the museum maintains the original concept of a tour through atimeline of evolutionary history. This is in accordance with the dominant ideas of the scientific community near the end of the nineteenth century.[6]
Although the museum houses primarily South American themed exhibits, there is also an Egyptian exhibit that shows the reconstruction of theAksha Temple. Because of the planned construction of alevee in theNile river that would flood the zone,UNESCO, and theSudanese,Egyptian and Argentine governments funded a reservation and investigation rescue mission. This resulted in three excavation campaigns carried out by Argentine archaeologists between 1961 and 1963. They excavated the temple ofRamesses II from the thirteenth century and in return for their work, the La Plata Museum received 300 items, 60 of which pertained to the temple of Ramesses II. The remaining items were found in an Egyptiantomb or other prehistoric sites and cemeteries.[7]Dardo Rocha also donated threemummies dating from around 2,700 years ago that were conserved in theirsarcophagi.[8]
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