The Museum of Gold () is an archaeology museum located in

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

. It is one of the most visited touristic highlights in the country. The museum receives around 500,000 tourists per year.Los 75 del Museo del Oro
- Semana The museum displays a selection of

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

and other metal alloys, such as '' Tumbaga'', and contains the largest collection of gold artifacts in the world in its exhibition rooms on the second and third floors. Together with

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

, stone,

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

, wood and textile objects, these items, made of what indigenous cultures considered to be a sacred metal, testify to the life and thought of the different societies which lived in present-day Colombia before the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Many indigenous groups did not consider gold to be a source of wealth, but rather held the belief it was charged with symbolic and religious values. The Spaniards, for example, reported the Inca royal family claimed to be descendants of the sun and the moon, and that gold was the “sweat of the sun” and silver the “tears of the moon.”

History

In 1934, the Bank of the Republic began helping to protect the

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

patrimony of

. The object known as Poporo Quimbaya was the first one in a collection. It has been on exhibition for 70 years. The museum is today administered by Banrepcultural. The museum houses the famous Muisca golden raft found in Pasca in 1969, that represents the ceremony of the new ''

zipa When the Spain, Spanish arrived in the central Colombian highlands, the region was organized into the Muisca Confederation, which had two rulers; the ''Zipa'' was the ruler of the southern part and based in Funza, Muyquytá. The ''Zaque'' was the ...

'' (ruler) of Muyquytá, the basis for the '' El Dorado'' myth. The heir to the chieftaincy assumed power with a great offering to the gods. In this representation he is seen standing at the centre of a raft, surrounded by the principal chieftains, all of them adorned with

and feathers. After a decade of work, the museum was expanded and renovated in October 2008. With the renovation, the museum organized the permanent exhibition in five rooms with archaeological objects and an interactive room. It also added an auditorium, some temporary exhibitions rooms, a cafe, a restaurant, and a souvenir store. There are other locations of the Museo del Oro throughout Colombia, including in Calima, Quimbaya, Santa Marta, and Cartagena.

Description

The museum has a collection of 55,000 pieces, 6,000 of which are on display in their expanded building. There are bilingual descriptions of almost all exhibits. On the first floor houses the museum's main entrance, a shop, and a restaurant. Exhibitions begin on the second floor. The main room is called "People and Gold in pre-Hispanic

". In glass vitrines display goldsmiths' work from the different cultures which inhabited Colombia before the Spanish colonists arrived. The permanent exhibition is divided into different halls for every culture: Calima, Quimbaya, Muisca, Zenú, Tierradentro, San Agustín, Tolima,

Tairona Tairona or Tayrona was a Pre-Columbian cultures of Colombia, Pre-Columbian culture of Colombia, which consisted in a group of chiefdoms in the region of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in present-day Cesar Department, Cesar, Magdalena Department, Mag ...

, and Urabá, and a special room called "After Columbus" (''Después de Colón''). The exposition continues on the third floor, with "The Flying Chamanic" and "The Offering." The first shows the process of a

shaman Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...

ic ceremony with its different gold pieces, the second is divided into three parts: the "Offering Room", the "Offering Boat", and the "Lake". At the end of the exposition, there is a "Profunditation Room" with artistic videos about the most important gold pieces of the museum. On the fourth floor, the museum has an Exploratorium for the purpose of promoting interaction, participation and reflection around the diversity and meaning of the heritage preserved in the museum. Additionally, the Museo del Oro also allows research visits and has a “specialized advisory service,” through which researchers can access collections. The museum has also engaged with internationally located museums in the past. In 2022, the Museo del Oro in Bogota loaned many works to Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for an exhibition titled “The Portable Universe / El Universo en Tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia.” This exhibition comprised approximately 400 works, from figurative ceramics and ceremonial tools to textiles and metalworks.

Gallery

References

External links

* *
The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material relevant to holdings at the Gold Museum
Gold Museum, Bogotá
within Google Arts & Culture * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gold Museum, Bogota Museums established in 1939 1939 establishments in Colombia Museums in Bogotá Art museums and galleries in Colombia History museums in Colombia Gold museums Jewellery museums Landmarks in Colombia Archaeological museums in Colombia National monuments of Colombia Pre-Columbian art

History

Description

Gallery

See also

References

External links