In partnership with the National Museum of Ethnology in Lisbon, the Portuguese Anthropological
Association (APA) is organizing the celebration of the World Anthropology Day & the
European Anthropology Days on February 19, 2026, at 3:00 PM, with free admission.
The program includes the Raúl Iturra Annual Lecture, delivered by Eglantina Monteiro and titled:
“Manaus 1997 or the Efficacy of Objects: The Unprecedented Experience of
Returning the Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira’s Amazonian Collection.”
About the talk:
“The exhibition Memories of the Amazon – Expressions of Identity and Ethnic
Affirmation (Manaus, 1997) was the most exciting experience I lived through as an
anthropologist-curator alongside José António Fernandes Dias. It represents an
absolutely unprecedented moment in the history of ethnographic collections in Portugal:
the return to their lands of origin of a very important group of artifacts collected in the
Amazon by Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (1783–1792), heritage of the University of
Coimbra and the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. I will speak about the involvement of
Indigenous leaders in organizing a broad program of activities parallel to the exhibition;
about the political and emotional impact of the exhibition among Indigenous
populations, who claim to be descendants of those who produced and used those
objects, but also among caboclos, the people of Manaus, and Amazonians in general;
about the letter that the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of Brazil (COIAB)
sent to President Jorge Sampaio requesting that the collection remain in Manaus, which
received no response; and about the lack of impact all of this had in Portugal beyond
academia.” (Eglantina Monteiro)
About the speaker:
Eglantina Monteiro (Porto, 1955), anthropologist and entrepreneur, lives and works in
Castro Marim. Between 1984 and 1999, she was a professor of anthropology of art at
the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. From 2000 to 2007, she taught
cultural anthropology in the Heritage and Sociology programs at the University of
Algarve. Beginning in 1992, she developed an ongoing curatorial practice, connecting
aesthetic expressions from different cultural worlds across various institutions. In 2008,
she co-founded Companhia das Culturas, an ecotourism project in the context of
organic agriculture. In 2019, she created 8950, the first natural, plastic-free hotel
amenities (personal care products) brand.