The “Amazonian Times” exhibition was born not only from a series of research with our 10 exhibition consultants, but also from several trips that were made to the Amazon region. In one of them, in 2019 – the one we stayed for the longest, three weeks –, I and the artistic and content editors, Eduardo Carvalho and Emanuel Alencar, visited the Adolpho Ducke Reserve, which is a well-developed Amazon rainforest research reserve near Manaus. And we visited it together with Noemia, who is a researcher at INPA, at night. And it was super interesting to hear how much the forest is present through the noises of animals at night. Noemia researches mushrooms and we went in to see bioluminescent mushrooms. It was an amazing experience! We had to walk a few minutes through the forest with flashlights, then we turned off the lights at a certain time, let our eyes adjust… And then we started to see the bioluminescent mushrooms. It was an amazing experience! Even after we turned on the flashlights again, we saw that there was a scorpion very close to us! It was this experience that we wanted to bring to the Tempos Amazônicos room, where we portray the forest at night – and there are the bioluminescent mushrooms!

We are in the first room of the exhibition “Amazonian Times”, which addresses the immense biodiversity of the Amazon and its importance for balance with other biomes in Brazil and the world.
Do you know the sounds of the forest you hear in this room?
These are real recordings of Amazon animals captured by the Providence monitoring and conservation project, a project carried out by the Mamirauá Institute.
In the aquatic part, you can hear a mix between the sounds of the gray Amazon river dolphin (or tucuxi river dolphin), the pink Amazon river dolphin and the marine manatee. And on the land part, there are the sounds of the forest and the dances between fauna and flora at night. Here we realize that nature is alive at any time of day.
In addition to the sounds of Amazonian animals, in this room there is also the presence of a leaf from the coccoloba tree. This leaf is considered the largest dicotyledonous leaf in the world. As it is a biological material, for us to bring it to the exhibition, we had the help of INPA, the National Institute for Research in the Amazon, and the UFRJ, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. INPA donated the leaf to UFRJ, and UFRJ loaned it to us, so that the Museu do Amanhã could include the leaf in the exhibition. Now that you have seen these backstage areas, explore the room and continue your visit by going to the Amazônia Milenar room.

The Amazon is strategic for the climate of Brazil and our planet for a number of reasons. First, it controls the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through photosynthesis, it controls the emission of water vapor and the formation of clouds and precipitation in large areas of South America, and it plays a role in biological regulation through its enormous biodiversity in large areas of South America.
The role as a carbon dioxide sink is extremely important, as the Amazon contains 120 billion tons of carbon and is therefore a strategic carbon reservoir in the continental areas of our planet. So, the Amazon performs strategic environmental services in maintaining rain in central Brazil, which irrigates the productivity of Brazilian agribusiness.