19th-century stolen Brazilian museum book found in London returned home
A 19th-century naturalist book that had been missing for 16 years after being stolen from a museum in northern Brazil has been discovered in London and repatriated on 1 May. The 1823 tome, “New Species of Brazilian Monkeys and Bats” by German zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, was taken from the Emílio Goeldi Museum in Belém in 2008. Three museum employees were charged with embezzlement in 2011 following an international investigation.
The Emílio Goeldi Museum, founded in 1866 and named after Swiss naturalist Emílio Goeldi, is a natural-history museum and research center focusing on the Brazilian Amazon. Other stolen books from the museum have been recovered recently, including works by German botanist Eduard Friedrich Poeppig and Dutch naturalist Willem Piso.
Brazil’s Federal Police stated, “The repatriation of these works is a milestone for Brazil, demonstrating a renewed commitment to the preservation of cultural heritage and setting an essential precedent for the recovery of historical monuments.”
In 1817, Spix and fellow botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius embarked on a mission to catalogue Amazonian wildlife and Indigenous languages. They brought thousands of plants and animals back to Germany, forming the basis of the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich.
Spix’s book from 1823 is one of several publications from their expedition. Various animals are named after Spix, including the extinct-in-the-wild Spix’s macaw, which was reintroduced to the Amazon in 2022.
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Elara Voss, graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a Master’s in Fine Art. She specializes in contemporary sculpture and installation art, exploring themes of nature and human interaction. Elara’s works have been featured in several group exhibitions across Europe, and she is currently working on her first solo show.