From exhibiting minerals to narrating extraction: Reflections from Lisbon’s National Museum of Science and Natural History

Abstract

This paper focuses on two mineral exhibitions currently held at the National Museum of Natural History and Science (MUHNAC) and aims to explore the cultural and social narratives underlying these displays, as well as the process through which minerals are discursively transformed into valuable resources and disconnected from histories of labour, colonialism and ecological degradation. Investigating mineral collections provides a lens for analysing the entanglement between mineral resources and the production of national and imperial imaginaries, and the intersection between heritage-making, nation and resources. This paper is based on site visits, technologies of display, textual discourse analysis and extensive conversations with MUHNAC staff. It also draws on consultations of archival material and theoretical frameworks from museum studies, critical heritage studies, and energy humanities. We contend that critically examining the role that mineral collections in museums have played in normalising notions of progress, modernity and nationalism and their association with resource extraction could encourage a reconsideration of how these heritage institutions could contribute to action for climate empowerment and to just green transition.