Revisiting the National Museum and the History of Anthropology in Brazil by Heloísa Alberto Torres

Abstract

The article highlights Heloísa Alberto (1895-1977)’s leading role in the field of science and culture in Brazil, in her role as an anthropologist and director of the National Museum, the guardian institution of the largest collections in Natural History and Anthropology. The analysis of its trajectory allows the reconstruction of the “social circles”, in their intersections and tensions, that enabled, in the Vargas Era, the formation of important Brazilian institutions committed to the construction of the national identity. In a special “structure of feelings” marked by positivism and the inherence between scientific progress and economic development, Heloísa Alberto Torres’s struggle reveals the appreciation of natural wealth and primary cultures as an outsdanding feature of the anthropological field in the early stages. The visibility of the scientist’s exceptional trajectory also seeks to do justice to those women who acted in public life, in positions of command, at a time when science was still an exclusively male domain. Finally, we conclude that the dynamics of social life and historical changes on the immobility of institutions are prevalent so that even in the most hostile scenarios it is possible to identify the emergencies that keep hope alive.