Museum exhibitions play an important role in raising public awareness in relation to the protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage.
Arqueonautas Worldwide’s (AWW) marine archaeological expeditions have been the source of new artefacts for the collections of national museums in the countries where we operate, such as the Ethnographic Museum and the Archaeology Museum in Praia, Cape Verde, and the Marine Museum of the Island of Mozambique.
These collections are a valid contribution to the development of cultural tourism in these countries, being instrumental in the dissemination of knowledge about their past and their culture and helping to generate local employment. In some cases, such as at the Archaeology Museum in Praia and the Marine Museum of the Island of Mozambique, AWW was also a sponsor of the rehabilitation work carried out in the buildings that house these museums.
In 2011, Arqueonautas Worldwide initiated a cooperation with the Leuchtenburg Museum in Germany that led to the opening of an exciting exhibition in May 2012 dedicated to the work of AWW at six wreck sites in Africa and East Asia with special emphasis on porcelain finds. Due to the success of this exhibition among the public, the Leuchtenburg Museum and AWW have agreed to extend this exhibition until 2016.
Prestigious institutions such as the V&A Museum in London (UK), the Mariners’ Museum in Virginia (US), the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, among others, have on their collections artefacts from wreck sites recovered by AWW.