It's always that thing: Foz needs a museum

Prof. José Afonso de Oliveira – OPINION

Year after year, Foz always needs a museum. What I've heard from important people saying they would create a museum for the city is not in the comic book – but, to this day, nothing has happened.

The design of a museum for a city is fundamental to the construction of its identity. The museum is not a repository of old things for people to see; much more than that, it is a way of telling the history of society through objects that can identify its remote or recent past.

The museum is, therefore, a meeting point for the city's inhabitants, providing a space for them to discuss, exchange ideas and talk., in short, remember important facts from the past and more recent moments, and with that, an increasingly stronger connection is acquired with the place where we live.

In a tourist city like ours, where we receive a large number of visitors, the museum has an important moment in the sense of not only showing the past, but also proposing cultural acts and actions typical of our society, involving the participation of visitors.

A very important and significant aspect is that the museum can function as a second school, being an excellent institution for meeting the educational needs of all our students. To this end, it must be equipped with modern computer resources to generate images, sounds, and voiceovers, bringing students together and thus improving and perfecting their entire school education. Therefore, it must contain a set of pieces that enable this better quality school education.

The museum administrators will be responsible for organizing ongoing exhibitions. To do so, they will need to seek out contacts with national and international cultural institutions so that we can always have new activities for the general public.

I think the museum could be installed in the current city hall building, which would then be transferred to another location. This way, the new attraction would be very close to the Cultural Foundation and the theater, which would create a cultural itinerary in the city.

We already have the Itaipu Ecomuseum and we would have a new space more suited to the life of our society.

José Afonso de Oliveira is a sociologist in Foz do Iguaçu.

This text is the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of H2FOZ.