The news comes after a Brazilian tourist knocked over and damaged a 300 year-old wooden statue depicting the Archangel Michael, as he was taking a photograph of another exhibit at the National Museum of Ancient Art on Sunday.
Contacted by Lusa News Agency about the need for more guards in Portugal’s museums in the wake of the accident, a source from the office of Minister Luís Filipe Castro Mendes said, the staff increase “is underway.”
“These application procedures were already planned and have nothing to do with the accident at the Ancient Art Museum, which was an exception,” the source said.
The Directorate of Cultural Heritage (DGPC) is in charge of 23 monuments, palaces and museums across the country, “which receive thousands of visitors, and until Sunday there was no record of any similar accident.”
On Monday, the MNAA said a multidisciplinary team would be set up to restore the statue of the Archangel Michael, and fix “fractures, breakages, movement and some loss of the polychromatic finish.”
On Sunday, when the accident happened, the Ministry of Culture announced that the DGPC “will analyse the details and the damage and the need to alter the museology of the exhibition, which was inaugurated this summer, in order to prevent accidents.”
Asked on Monday about the need to review the rules of the exhibition routes of the museums, the Minister’s office said there were no plans to do so and that “whenever the projects are set up the issues of security are always taken into account.”
“This misfortune has called attention to these issues,” the Minister’s office said, adding that the situation at the MNAA “is being analysed.”