Museum of the Portuguese Language

The Museum of the Portuguese Language (Museu da Língua Portuguesa, muˈzew dɐ ˈlĩɡwɐ poʁtuˈɡezɐ) is an interactive Portuguese language—and Linguistics/Language Development in general—museum in São Paulo, Brazil. It is housed in the Estação da Luz railway station, in the urban district of the same name. Three hundred thousand passengers arrive and leave the station every day, and the choice of the building for the launching of the museum is connected to the fact that it was mainly here that thousands of non Portuguese speaking immigrants arriving from Europe and Asia into São Paulo via the Port of Santos got acquainted with the language for the first time. The idea of a museum monument to the language was conceived by the São Paulo Secretary of Culture in conjunction with the Roberto Marinho Foundation, at a cost of around 37 million reais. The objective of the museum is to create a living representation of the Portuguese language, where visitors may be surprised and educated by unusual and unfamiliar aspects of their own native language. Secondly, the caretakers of the museum, as expressed on the official website, "desire that, in this museum, the public has access to new knowledge and reflection in an intense and pleasurable manner," as it notices the relationship of the language with others, as well as its proto languages. The museum targets the Portuguese speaking population, made up of peoples from many regions and social backgrounds, but who still have not had the opportunity to gain a broader understanding of the origins, the history and the continuous evolution of the language.

The project was conceived in 2001. It is speculated by many sources that São Paulo was chosen as the site of the museum for its symbolism, as it is the largest Portuguese speaking city and metropolitan region in the world, with 20 million inhabitants. Among the partners in the project were Gilberto Gil, IBM Brazil, the Brazilian Postal Service, Rede Globo, Petrobras, Vivo, AES Eletropaulo, Grupo Votorantim and BNDES. Also supporting the effort were the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the mayorship of São Paulo, the CPTM, the Otis Elevator Company, Carrier and the Luso Brazilian Foundation. The idea of a Portuguese Language museum came from Ralph Appelbaum, who also developed the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D. C., and the fossil room of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The architectural project was undertaken by Brazilian father son duo Paulo and Pedro Mendes da Rocha. The director of the museum is sociologist Isa Grinspun Ferraz, who coordinated a team of thirty Portuguese language specialists to implement the museum. The artistic director is Marcello Dantas.

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:

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:
cquote|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. The installations were restored and the museum opened again on March 12, 2020.

The museum itself features innovative and predominantly virtual exhibits which feature a mixture of art, technology and interactivity, while keeping in mind the historical building the museum is housed in. It consists of diverse exhibitions with hands on activities, videos, sounds and images about Linguistics and Portuguese language developments.

The exhibitions were curated by Isa Grinspum Ferraz and Hugo Barreto.

The entrance is located at door A of the Luz Station, in front of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. The ticket office, café, store, and museum administration are all located at the entrance of the building.

The first floor is where the museum's temporary exhibitions are located, the Paulo Freire Educational Space, and also another space of the museum's administration.

The exhibition "Línguas do mundo" exhibit is where visitors can hear the various languages spoken by people, highlighting 23 different languages. The exhibition "Rua da Língua" is a 100 meter long screen, covering much of the second floor wall. Words, texts, images and drawings are projected. The exhibition "Falares" shows the diversity of the Portuguese language in its accents, vocabulary, among other factors that change the way of expressing oneself from Portuguese However, it broadcast much earlier than planned, on Monday, 27 December 2021.