The Museum of Gold ( es, El Museo del Oro) is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

located in Bogotá, Colombia. 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
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Semana ''Semana'' (Spanish: ''Week'') is a weekly magazine in Colombia. History ''Semana'' was founded in 1946 by Alberto Lleras Camargo (who would become president of Colombia in 1958) and that folded in 1961. It was relaunched by journalist Felipe ...

The museum displays a selection of

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

gold and other metal alloys, such as ''

Tumbaga ''Tumbaga'' is the name for a non-specific alloy of gold and copper given by Spanish Conquistadors to metals composed of these elements found in widespread use in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica in North America and South America. The term is believe ...

'', 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 ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

, 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 ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

, wood and textile objects, these items, made of a– to

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

cultures – 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 Spain began colonizing the Americas under the Crown of Castile and was spearheaded by the Spanish . The Americas were invaded and incorporated into the Spanish Empire, with the exception of Brazil, British America, and some small region ...

History

In 1934, the Bank of the Republic began helping to protect the archaeological patrimony of Colombia. The object known as

Poporo Quimbaya Poporo is a device used by indigenous cultures in present and pre-Columbian South America for storage of small amounts of lime produced from burnt and crushed sea-shells. It consists of two pieces: the receptacle, and the lid which includes a p ...

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 Pasca is a town and municipality in the Cundinamarca department of Colombia located in the Andes. It belongs to the Sumapaz Province. Pasca is situated on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense at a distance of from the capital Bogotá. It borders F ...

in 1969, that represents the ceremony of the new ''

zipa When the 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 Muyquytá. The ''hoa'' was the ruler of 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

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

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.

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 Colombia". 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 The Muisca (also called Chibcha) are an indigenous people and culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia, that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish conquest. The people spoke Muysccubun, a language of the Chibchan langu ...

, Zenú,

Tierradentro Tierra abajo (meaning "Underground" in Spanish for their well-known tombs) is one of the ancient Pre-Columbian cultures of Colombia. It started to flourish around 200 BC in the mountains of southwest Colombia, and continued into the 17th century. T ...

, San Agustín, Tolima,

Tairona Tairona (or Tayrona) was a 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, Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America, which g ...

, 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 religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

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.

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