On 25 May, the exhibition Angola: Saberes em movimento [Angola: Knowledge on the Move] will open at the Frei Manuel do Cenáculo National Museum in Évora, as part of the KNOW.AFRICA project.

Curated by Sara Albuquerque and Anderson Pereira Antunes, the exhibition is made up of a series of panels that invite visitors ‘to get to know the variety of players involved in four of the main Portuguese scientific expeditions to Africa in the second half of the 19th century and to reflect on the role they played in building the historical, scientific, and cultural heritage that can be found in Europe today.’

The panels focus on four Portuguese scientific expeditions that travelled through Angola in the second half of the 19th century, namely the expeditions of Friedrich Welwitsch (1853-1860), Hermenegildo de Brito Capelo and Roberto Ivens (1877-1880 and 1884-1885), and Henrique de Carvalho (1884-1888). In them, local agents are presented, including cooks, porters and helpers, who shared information about African nature and contributed to the collection of specimens, among other aspects, showing the collaborative dimension of scientific knowledge.

The inauguration will be part of the Frei Manuel do Cenáculo National Museum’s Africa Day and will be preceded by a musical performance of a re-reading of a song recorded by Hermenegildo de Brito Capelo and Roberto Ivens in Angola. This is a collaboration between the project and students from the Music Department of the University of Évora’s School of Arts.

The KNOW.AFRICA project is investigating the accounts of Portuguese explorers through historical documentation. In it, the team is finding ‘clues that reveal who were the various agents involved in the Portuguese scientific expeditions across the African continent’. The aim of the project is to ‘reveal how Africans also contributed to the construction of knowledge and the formation of scientific collections resulting from these expeditions, and to promote a more critical understanding of the fundamental role of African societies in the History of Science’.