Opening Ceremony
The museum was dedicated on Monday, 20 March 2006, with the presence of the Minister of Culture and singer Gilberto Gil, representing the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Also present were the Minister of Culture of Portugal, Isabel Pires de Lima, the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the mayor of Lisbon António Carmona Rodrigues, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guinea-Bissau António Isaac Monteiro, the President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and other representative authorities from all Portuguese-speaking nations. Gilberto Gil spoke during the ceremony:
The language speaks for you. The purpose of studying and interacting with a language in a museum, cultural and exchange programs, orthographic agreements, and the development of new words show how important it is. The language is our mother. This museum covers most, if not all, the aspects of the written and spoken language, of the dynamic language, the language of interaction, the language of affection, the language of gestures and of any other aspects that this museum was meant to promote.Sílvia Finguerut, director of Patrimony and the Environment for the Roberto Marinho foundation, claimed that there didn't exist a museum in the world dedicated solely to a language. Finguerut noted the symbolism of the museum's location in the Estação da Luz:
During many decades, the foreign immigrants who were reaching São Paulo were disembarking in this station, a place where other languages were meeting with our Portuguese.Geraldo Alckmin alluded to the importance of the museum to the Portuguese-speaking community, to the students, the professors, and to the preservation of the language itself.
This shows again the important role of Brazil in the picture of the development of the Portuguese language. It is an extraordinary initiative for the reinforcement of the solidarity between the peoples who speak Portuguese.José Roberto Marinho finished the ceremony:
It is fundamental that people communicate. It is necessary to know the language to go deeper into several subjects. And in this space we find the means of directing people to the study of, and the interest for the language and also of having an intersection of the academic world with daily life.The following day, 21 March, the doors of the museum were opened to the public.
-
The Estação da Luz, the building housing the museum.
-
The entrance to the museum.
Read more about this topic: Museum Of The Portuguese Language
Famous quotes containing the words opening and/or ceremony:
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
““Dirty fellow!” exclaimed the Captain, seizing both her wrists, “hark you, Mrs. Frog, you’d best hold your tongue; for I must make bold to tell you, if you don’t, that I shall make no ceremony of tripping you out of the window, and there you may lie in the mud till some of your Monseers come to help you out of it.””
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)