The National Museum of Ethnology ( pt, Museu Nacional de Etnologia) is an
ethnology
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
museum in
Lisbon, Portugal. The museum holds in its collections the most relevant ethnographic heritage in Portugal. It is responsible for the safeguarding and management of nearly half a million items.
The museum's ethnographic collections are divided into two separate groups. There is the collection assembled by the ''National Museum of Ethnology's staff'' dating from the museum's launch in 1962, created by the team who introduced the field of modern
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
to Portugal. These collections, totaling 42,000 objects, are representative of 80 countries and 5 continents, with greater emphasis on cultures from Africa, Asia and South America, and traditional
Portuguese culture
The culture of Portugal is a very rich result of a complex flow of many different civilizations during the past millennia. From prehistoric cultures, to its Pre-Roman civilizations (such as the Lusitanians, the Gallaeci, the Celtici, and the C ...
.
Many of these collections were exhaustively documented through field research, and are inseparable from the important photographic, film, sound and drawing Archives that constituting a significant part of the nearly half a million items that make the Museum's movable heritage.
The second set of the museum's collection consists of 11,600 objects from the ''Popular'' Art ''Museum'', largely assembled in the 1930s and early 1940s for the propaganda exhibitions promoted by the regime of ''Estado Novo''. They differ significantly from their matching parts of the collections of the ''National Museum of Ethnology'' due to the lesser amount of information available, if any, about their origin.
Following the transfer of the collections of the Museum of Popular Art in 2007 to the building of the National Museum of Ethnology, both museums were merged in 2012 into a single museum – National Museum of Ethnology / Popular Art Museum.
External links
Official website
*National Museum of Ethnology o
Google Arts & Culture
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Museums established in 1965
Museums in Lisbon
National museums of Portugal
Ethnographic museums in Portugal
African art
Asian art