As donations for the restoration of the Notre-Dame cathedral top $900,000, the director of Brazil’s devastated National Museum can only hope for such deep pockets in his own country. Nearly eight months after a faulty air conditioning system sparked a fire that gutted Latin America’s main natural history museum and destroyed most of its collection, just $280,000 or so has been raised for its reconstruction. “We are very happy for the extremely positive reaction of French society and we hope that following this example Brazilian businesses and millionaires will start to send us their donations,” Alexander Kellner, director of the Rio de Janeiro-based museum, told AFP.
