Tenerife Museums Join "Museums in Motion" Exchange Project
Tenerife's Museum and Centers Authority has joined the "Museums in Motion" project, an initiative to boost inter-island cooperation among Canary Islands museums through temporary exchanges of historical items, collections, and staff.
The Museum and Centers Authority (OAMC) of Tenerife has joined the "Museums in Motion" project. This initiative, led by the Canary Islands government's General Directorate of Culture, aims to boost cooperation between the islands' museums. It does this by temporarily swapping historical items, collections, and even museum staff.
With the slogan "Weaving Networks," the project seeks to refresh the Canary Islands' museum system. It also aims to bring new exhibits to the public on each island and create a shared learning environment for museum professionals, collections, and the museums themselves. José Carlos Acha, Tenerife's Minister of Culture and Museums, stated that "exchanging items and skilled staff between islands helps strengthen our cultural ties, improve museum management, and offer the public new perspectives on our shared heritage."
Tenerife's museums have already participated in "Museums in Motion" and plan to do so again in 2026. They have exchanged various historical pieces with other museums across the Archipelago. For instance, Casa Lercaro (the Museum of History and Anthropology) sent the "Carte de L’Isles de Teneriffe," attributed to J. Scheffer, along with geographical maps titled "The Canary Islands," to Casa de Colón in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The Museum of Nature and Archaeology (MUNA) loaned several items from its Natural Sciences collection to the Island Museum of La Palma. These included a monk seal skull, a mako shark jaw, and a stuffed long-eared bat from La Palma. In return, MUNA received two fossilized leaves from the La Palma museum, which are now part of its own natural collection.
The Archaeological Museum of Tenerife transferred a necklace made of 201 pre-Hispanic baked clay beads, found in a burial cave in El Cardón (Los Silos). From El Museo Canario in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, it received a ceramic pot. This pot is shaped like a cone with its top cut off, has a square handle, and is decorated with red triangular patterns. It comes from El Tabaibal, Arucas.
The Museum of Science and the Cosmos loaned two meteorites (one stony and one metallic) to the Elder Museum of Science and Technology in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In return, it received a glove worn by cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev during his missions to the MIR space station in the 1990s.