Rio de Janeiro
09.03.2008
Filipe Carvalho, Portugal
Américo Aguiar, Portugal
A New World, A New Empire – The Portuguese Court in Brazil – 1808-1822 is the name of the exhibition which will open the commemorations of the 200 years of the arrival of the Portuguese Court in Brazil.
The exhibition will be officially opened in the National History Museum in Rio de Janeiro, by the Presidents of the Portuguese and Brazilian Republics, on March 7, the day that the Royal Fleet arrived in Guanabara Bay.
The exhibition, sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, approaches the political and socio-cultural aspects of the event, with 320 Portuguese and Brazilian articles, belonging to public and private institutions and to private collectors.
On show in the more than 1,200 square metres of galleries will be a great number of documents, together with objects, many of which unknown to the public as, for instance, the list of the names of the people which sailed in each ship of the Royal Fleet.
In complement to the exhibition a catalogue will be published with contributions from historians Afonso Marques dos Santos (in memoriam), Arno Wehling, Eduardo Lourenço, Jorge Couto and Vera Lúcia Bottrel Tostes.
The arrival of the Portuguese Court in Brazil was not just the beginning of the birth of a new nation, but also the building of an Empire in America, in which Rio de Janeiro took central place, as the capital of the Luso-Brazilian Empire.
The celebration of the 200 years of this event signifies rereading the historic episode with a fresh look at its personages, especially in the case of King João VI, the first European monarch to cross the Equator, to stand on tropical land and to be acclaimed King in the Colony.
© 2008 Presidency of the Portuguese Republic