Edit Document

Data is Null. This method or property cannot be called on Null values.

ID #

Type

Title

Created By

Created At

Author(s)

Keywords

Subject

Document

The opaque face of the Gold Museum

The Gold Museum houses the largest goldsmith collection in Colombia. A collection that began the Banco de la República in 1939, when it acquired the famous quimbaya poporo. From that moment on, the Bank became the first buyer of stolen gold pieces in the country, with the noble mission of preventing them from falling into the hands of collectors or ending up in exhibitions or deposits in other museums abroad. This collection grew, but maintained its reserved nature until 1959, when the Board of Directors finally decided to open an exhibition room to the public. From that moment on, it consolidated itself as one of the most important museums in the country and an international reference for the myth of El Dorado. To date, it boasts a collection of more than 34,000 gold objects, as well as thousands of lithics and ceramic pieces. With it we have been able to disseminate our past, in more than a hundred traveling exhibitions, in different cities around the world.

Until then, the history of the Gold Museum is impeccable and praiseworthy, despite having been consolidated with looted pieces, with little information on the archaeological context. For this reason, for some years now, it has been monitoring the archaeological projects that are being developed in the country, with the firm intention of acquiring the goldsmith pieces from scientific excavations, leaving the rest of the materials to the museums or houses of the regional culture, maintaining the biased view with which the Bank of the Republic began this collection at the time. They are also recognized for the meticulous task of studying these artifacts, with sophisticated techniques, seeking to obtain and disseminate new knowledge associated with the development of goldsmithing and metallurgy in this corner of South America.

The Political Constitution of Colombia, in its article 72, specifies that the archaeological heritage makes up the national identity and therefore belongs to the Nation. It is an inalienable, non-seizable and imprescriptible heritage. Law 397 of 1997, modified by article 3 of Law 1185 of 2008, specifies the concept of archaeological heritage as “those furniture or buildings that originate from disappeared cultures, or that belong to the colonial era, as well as human remains. and organics related to those cultures.” With this last law, the possibility of possession was regulated, which means that museums, both public and private, as well as any citizen, can legally have archaeological collections, without being their owners, as long as they comply with the registration, management and security obligations. of said artifacts. This procedure was regulated by Decree 1080 of 2015.

Without a doubt, one of the great responsibilities of holders of archaeological pieces is to allow access to them, through exhibition spaces or through scheduled consultations to reserve collections, especially for researchers. In this aspect, the Gold Museum has two faces: an impeccable public exhibition and the other, a less friendly one, which restricts access to the collections, almost only to its officials and their friends. It would seem that there has been an institutional policy for some time, it is not known whether by the Bank or the Museum, to prevent various researchers from studying the pieces, from perspectives as varied as art history, archeology or archaeometry. Even if applications are made in advance, even if these students, scholarship holders or researchers have endorsements from prestigious academic institutions, the answer remains the same: No.

It is understood that the consultation of the pieces must be done under certain security and conservation parameters, by the Museum, taking into account pre-established schedules and conditions. What cannot happen is that under this pretext it has become impossible for some to access the collection, while a few other people enjoy privileges. This is a flagrant violation of the right of access to knowledge, an inalienable constitutional right. The same thing happens if we want to access “our” heritage through digital images, to use them in a study, to accompany a publication, or for a class or presentation. Access to them is also restricted and requires, as in my case, to take a kind of steps that are absolutely Kafkaesque.

A few months ago, after finishing an article on maritime archeology with a colleague, we thought it would be good to illustrate pre-Hispanic navigation with an image of the famous Muisca raft, another of the museum's emblematic pieces. Although I have images of this piece from my visits to the museum, they are not of the quality for a scientific publication. That is why I wrote to the Gold Museum by email to request said image. The initial response was unusual. They forced me to send the manuscript, so that they, no mention of who, could evaluate the content of our document and decide whether to share the image with us or not. My immediate response was to refuse to send the manuscript, which had already been evaluated by academic peers in the magazine, reiterating my request, taking into account that it is an archaeological piece, heritage of the Nation, not of the Bank, and in that sense heritage of everyone. I immediately received a kind response from its director, who explained to me that there is an institutional procedure that must be followed, clarifying, of course, that although the pieces are archaeological heritage of the Nation, the photos are property of the Bank.

Subsequently, he referred me to another official who contacted me, made me fill out a form with the title of the article, name of the magazine and other things. After sending the information, it asked me for some requirements that were pending such as the certificate of existence and legal representation and a copy of the identification of the legal representative of the magazine. An unusual requirement for a scientific publication that, in no case, requires documents of this nature from any author. The normal practice, accepted internationally, is to specify the intellectual and patrimonial authorship in the citation of the credits of the images of the person taking the photo or the institution that transfers it. Needless to say, I did not advance the process to avoid making a fool of myself.

For now it is clear that the archaeological heritage does not belong to everyone, that the photos of the archaeological pieces of the Nation belong to the Bank of the Republic, and that it is this institution that decides in which publications its images appear (since the researchers cannot take them), assuming rights that do not correspond to them. An elitist and discriminatory position that many national and international researchers have experienced, who seek to contribute to the knowledge of this country's past and share it in different ways. In the end, strategies that complement each other and could be enhanced if the Gold Museum and the Banco de la República review and correct their policies in this regard, making them inclusive, facilitating and promoting the development of collection research, and guaranteeing access to knowledge, a shared right of all Colombians.

The Gold Museum also shines in the regions and abroad

In Bogotá, but also in its regional headquarters in various cities of the country and through its exhibitions in other cities around the world, the Gold Museum disseminates the wealth of pre-Columbian art.

The Gold Museum has expanded in Colombia and other countries around the world and has managed to open more than 200 exhibitions abroad to present the objects in its collections, a work that since 1954 has disseminated cultural heritage in the most prominent museums in the world. Colombian. In 2018 the Gold Museum exhibited at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul; In 2019 he exhibited at the Gimhae National Museum, also in Korea. He has exhibited in Paris, at the Grand Palais, and in 2013 he was present at the British Museum in London. These are just a few examples.
Currently, the exhibition “The Portable Universe / El Universo en tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia” has been presented since May 29 and will continue until October 2 at the County Museum of Art in Los Angeles (LACMA). , in California. From November 6 to April 23, 2023 it will be presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and from May 29 to October 8, 2023 it will be exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in Canada.

Around 400 pieces including ceramics, ritual and ceremonial elements, textiles, metals and historical documents are part of the exhibition. Of these, 230 come from the Gold Museum of the Banco de la República and others are part of the permanent collection of LACMA, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, the Houston Museum of Art and the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
The exhibition shows the ancestral cosmogony and collectibles of Colombian cultures of the past. It is a reflection of the way in which the art of ancestral indigenous communities and the myth around the legend of El Dorado is approached. The exhibition is co-curated by Diana Magaloni, Virginia Fields and Julia Burtenshaw, LACMA officials, and María Alicia Uribe, director of the Gold Museum, and archaeologist Héctor García, museum official.

For six years, the concept of the exhibition was created through joint curatorship, with texts, a script and a catalogue. It is also supported by contemporary indigenous collaborators. This exhibition seeks to recognize that indigenous knowledge and provides another look at the pieces that make up the exhibition. “There is participation of indigenous people from the Arhuaco community of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, they contribute their vision of the objects in this exhibition. It is the view of the current indigenous world. The indigenous people also participate in the writing of the texts, they make very beautiful contributions from their ways of understanding the world, of understanding others. The texts show their way of understanding the mountains, the rivers and the mountains,” says the director of the Gold Museum.

The exhibition currently on display in Los Angeles showcases the ancestral cosmogony and collectibles of past Colombian cultures. It is a reflection of the way in which the art of ancestral indigenous communities and the myth around the legend of El Dorado is approached.

This exhibition seeks to relate ancestral knowledge in relation to the Western world and with ourselves, with the environment and with the world in which we live. It is related to the ways of existing, its relationship with nature and the environment, the construction of metaphors about the universe in the midst of the current climate and food crisis, the problematic relationships between groups and countries today. It shows other ways of thinking about these relationships with the environment and with others. "There are other ways of thinking about our relationship with the world, from which we can learn," says María Alicia Uribe.
These exhibitions are intended to share Colombian archaeological heritage with the rest of the world. These collections allow us to think about important issues in the world, present Colombian diversity, highlight the importance and depth of the pre-Hispanic past, since there are 12,000 years of history that are not widely known in the world.

These collections allow us to think about important issues in the world, present Colombian diversity, highlight the importance and depth of the pre-Hispanic past, since there are 12,000 years of history that are not widely known in the world.

The Gold Museum is also expanding to other regions of the country. Its headquarters are located in strategic cities, since they are located in regions where pre-Hispanic goldsmithing was developed in present-day Colombia.
There are currently six regional museums in Colombia. There are five gold museums and one Ethnographic Museum in Leticia. In 2010 the renovation of the museum network began. The gold museums of Santa Marta and Pasto, and the Ethnographic Museum of Leticia, are now ready. Work is being completed in the museums of Armenia and Cartagena. All that remains is to renovate the Cali Gold Museum, dedicated to the Calima culture.
The doors of the Quimbaya Gold Museum and Cultural Center in Armenia, designed by architect Rogelio Salmona, were recently opened. This building received the National Architecture Prize and was later declared cultural heritage of Colombians. The architectural project recovers the culture and landscape of the coffee region. It occupies more than 10,000 square meters and has a constructed area of ??approximately 2,500 square meters. It has access for disabled people and has sustainability systems in the operation of the building.

Within this project, an archaeobotanical garden was planted that tells 12,00 years of history of the plants of the region and their relationship with human beings. It is a living museum that reveals the history of plants. There is an application where you can take independent tours to learn about the architecture and the garden.
In the landscape garden, the visitor will have the opportunity to enjoy a tour among ornamental plants, paths and water grooves, an experience that tells the story through the vegetation. The selection of plants found in this garden is the result of archaeobotanical research in which a careful archaeological analysis of organic remains and artifacts and the knowledge of the ethnic and peasant communities of the region has been carried out.
The garden is divided into three spaces. “First settlers and beginnings of plant domestication” explores what the climate was like 12,000 years ago, what the first domesticated plants were and what those domestication processes were like. This space has ancient plant species such as totumo and annatto, plants such as heliconias, ferns, passionflowers and nettles. The second space is “Horticulture in the Archaic period”, which shows how the landscape was transformed as the inhabitants appropriated the territory with technologies and forms of subsistence that implied extensive knowledge of the properties of plants. In this space you can see roots, tubers and edible fruits such as cassava, sweet potato, sago and bore. And the last space is “Agriculture in pottery and goldsmith societies” which tells the ways in which agro-pottery and goldsmith societies related to the environment from before Christ until the arrival of the European conquerors in the 16th century. It is provided with magical-religious plants such as coca, food plants such as corn and achira, and also plants for the production of objects such as fique.

The Archeobotanical garden shows the diversity of ecosystems that exist in Colombia. Archaeobotany is a branch of archeology that studies the interaction between plants, humans and landscapes in ancient times. Currently, this garden is very important since there is a movement that seeks to recover ancestral seeds and their cultivation methods, without using chemicals, and their agroecological management. The indigenous people in Colombia have used these ancestral forms in their agriculture.
On the other hand, the new exhibition hall of the Museo Del Oro Quimbaya and Cultural Center of Armenia presents the exhibition “Gardens and paradises: representations of domesticated nature”, curated by Luis Fernando Ramírez Celis, which presents 79 original works from the collection of art from the Bank of the Republic, ranging from the 17th century to the 21st century in formats such as painting, drawing, engraving, video and installation.

You can also visit the temporary exhibition “The landscape, the people and the gold in pre-Hispanic Colombia” in the Banco de la República building located in the center of the city. This exhibition covers the cultural diversity of Colombia, its different goldsmith styles, periods and indigenous communities. It will be displayed while the museum's permanent exhibition opens in 2023.
The Museum offers new spaces and services such as the auditorium, which will allow for concerts and permanent academic programming. The Children's Room will be a new reading space that will motivate children with the stories and stories from the bibliographic collection designed for them, with more than six thousand books of children's literature, audiovisual material, games and informative books in various areas of knowledge.
There is also a regional digital documentation center to support researchers and offer new access alternatives to the collections available in the Banco de la República Library Network. This center is aimed at the recovery, preservation and dissemination of the documentary heritage of Quindío and it contains documentary collections on the life and work of the architect Rogelio Salmona. The cultural center also has an Exploratory where workshops and recreational activities are held, and visitors will be able to access a variety of important cultural and academic programming.

HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM 

The Gold Museum of the Banco de la República was founded in 1939 by Don Julio Caro and Dr. Luis Angel Arango. Its objective was to gather and preserve pieces of pre-Columbian goldsmithing, taking into account the enormous importance of this industry among several of the aboriginal groups that lived here, especially among those who were based in western Colombia. The Museum began with the purchase of several private collections, among which those patiently formed by Don Leoca-dio Marra Arango, in Medellín, and Don Santiago Vélez, in Manizales, stand out for their importance. Thanks to the scientific curiosity and cultural interest of these and other Colombians, the purpose of rescuing this admirable cultural heritage began to take shape in Paris. Since 1968, the Gold Museum has had a modern building, built in -especially for a proper display of the collection's objects, which It now has nearly 26,000 pieces, the largest of its kind in the world, some of which are surprising for their formal beauty and the advanced metallurgical techniques used in their production. The Museum Exhibitions The Gold Museum has dedicated three of the floors of its building to show the public its vast collection of pre-Hispanic gold objects. The exhibition begins on the first floor with an introduction to the indigenous man and his geographical environment. In addition, pieces of ceramics and other materials from the archaeological zones are shown, which can be seen on a wall map. Main Hall of the Museum. In the foreground, the original statue of Saint Augustine. It was brought to Bogo-U at the beginning of the century. On the second floor, which is currently being remodeled, the techniques used in the exploitation and manufacture of gold and other metals and the use given to the objects already made will be shown, with the following program: Gold-bearing areas and current forms of exploitation, noting the fact that miners continue to use the same indigenous techniques that the first Spanish chroniclers observed. The hammering of gold on anvils and Hammering gold on anvils and 4 
with stone hammers, a work technique that involves knowing in depth the behavior of metals and their alloys. The foundry, in which they used blowtorches and ceramic crucibles. Welding, in which they used systems unknown in Europe until this acronym. The lost wax casting process, with or without a core or using stone matrices, a technique with which they managed to make incredible pieces. fine delicacy, such as the nostrils of the Sinú area, which today cannot be reproduced except with the use of centrifuges and radiant ovens. The finishes, including oxidation gilding, which demonstrates a complete mastery of the behavior · chemical and physical treatment of metals.

The uses that the pre-Hispanic indigenous people gave to gold objects were various: as personal adornment for festivals and for war; the spectacle of warriors adorned with helmets, masks, earmuffs, nose rings, breastplates, bracelets, all made of gold and shining in the sun, deeply impressed the Spaniards. As religious offerings and for ornamentation of their homes, they made many utensils and containers, such as tweezers, forks, pins, chisels, punches, etc. needles, hooks, totumas and spoons. They also used musical instruments of the same metal and various weapons. Gold pieces that are related to the use of hallucinogenic drugs are very common: poporos and snails for coca, trays for coca. the yopo, tobacco pipes and others. Many of the animals represented in gold have their importance in the mythology and religious symbolism of indigenous cultures. The gold pieces and their uses were made. Those of masterpieces, which are artistically and technically at the level of those made by the great civilizations of the world, can be appreciated when visiting the Gold Gallery, on the third floor of the Museum. 

Cultural Extension The Gold Museum has a cultural extension service whose purpose is to disseminate the importance and meaning that the collections it keeps have for the country. This service is provided through lectures illustrated with slides, which serve to prepare the subsequent visit to the Museum, and to motivate interest and research on the subject of the pre-Columbian world as an essential part of the History of Colombia. The Cultural Extension works preferably with schools, colleges and universities in the city of Bogotá, without excluding various public or private organizations. It is also projected, within the same media and levels, in the different cities of the republic where the Traveling Exhibition is temporarily exhibited, to complement the informative work. The goal pursued with this activity is to contribute to awakening a national consciousness to stimulate the study of a cultural root that goes back to the pre-Columbian past.

Cultural Extension The Gold Museum has a cultural extension service whose purpose is to disseminate the importance and meaning that the collections it keeps have for the country. This service is provided through lectures illustrated with slides, which serve to prepare the subsequent visit to the Museum, and to motivate interest and research on the subject of the pre-Columbian world as an essential part of the History of Colombia. The Cultural Extension works preferably with schools, colleges and universities in the city of Bogotá, without excluding various public or private organizations. It is also projected, within the same media and levels, in the different cities of the republic where the Traveling Exhibition is temporarily exhibited, to complement the informative work. The goal pursued with this activity is to contribute to awakening a national consciousness to stimulate the study of a cultural root that goes back to the pre-Columbian past.

Educational programs The Museum, within the cultural activities it has been carrying out, has started a program to bring children closer to their history and cultural identity. Its main objective has been to prepare him to understand and value the objects that make up his cultural heritage, motivating him to freely express his imagination, by demonstrating his creativity in artistic manifestations. This program began in September 1977, at the initiative of the UNESCO Regional Andean Cultural Heritage Project. Among the next achievements that this entity plans is the publication of a book that summarizes the experiences acquired in the application of this plan in several countries, such as Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela. The program is directed by people specialized in the pedagogical and artistic fields, who lead groups of 25 children between 7 and 11 years of age.

They are given the explanation regarding the selected room in the Museum, and then they are induced to graphically express the object that most impressed their interest and sensitivity. With the artistic material made by the children in the Gold Museum, an exhibition called: "Pre-Columbian Images seen by children of today in Colombia" will be organized. Those who visit the Museum Another of the services of the Gold Museum is the attention to visitors. For this purpose, it has Guras who speak different languages ??and are prepared to explain in detail the different cultures and the pieces exhibited. The influx of tourists at some times of the year is very large. Among the Colombians who come to spend vacations in Bogotá, very few fail to visit the Museum and are amazed by the beauty and presentation of the pre-Columbian objects that many are unaware of. The explanation of the Figures complements their knowledge of the history and art of our indigenous people.

Foreign tourists come in groups organized by travel agencies and with their respective guides. Those who come alone are assisted by the Museum Guides and receive explanations in the language they request. The number of visitors varies. between 500 to 600 per day. On holidays there are up to 1,300 per day, with more Spanish-speaking visitors. Library With the periodic publication of the Museum's Bulletin, it is expected to significantly increase the Library's funds, which already have. nearly 3,000 Vfr lumens, largely specialized in archeology and other anthropological aspects and which has its doors open to researchers. This branch of the Museum also facilitates the consultation of some translations of relevant books and articles. to the aforementioned topics, as well as the compilation that has been made of press clippings alluding to these same aspects.

Foreign tourists come in groups organized by travel agencies and with their respective guides. Those who come alone are assisted by the Museum Guides and receive explanations in the language they request. The number of visitors varies. between 500 to 600 per day. On holidays there are up to 1,300 per day, with more Spanish-speaking visitors. Library With the periodic publication of the Museum's Bulletin, it is expected to significantly increase the Library's funds, which already have. nearly 3,000 Vfr lumens, largely specialized in archeology and other anthropological aspects and which has its doors open to researchers. This branch of the Museum also facilitates the consultation of some translations of relevant books and articles. to the aforementioned topics, as well as the compilation that has been made of press clippings alluding to these same aspects.

Notes

Draft

Status

Country

City

Placename

Cancel