Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art

The Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, also known as the Pre-Columbian Museum, is a cultural institution created by the Municipality of Santiago and the Larraín Echeñique Family Foundation. The Museum was founded on December 10, 1981 and, being a public-private institution, it is financed in equal parts by the I. Municipality of Santiago, the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage and the own resources generated by the Museum itself. Museum.

The Museum works in the old building of the Palace of the Royal Customs of Santiago, in Calle Bandera esquina Compañía, in the historic center of the Chilean capital (Plaza de Armas metro station).

History

For more than fifty years, Chilean architect and philanthropist Sergio Larraín García-Moreno built up an important collection of pre-Columbian objects. Following strictly aesthetic and non-anthropological criteria, Larraín put together a complete collection of objects that as a whole represents a truly American art.

During the 1970s, Larraín entrusted the lawyer Julio Philippi with the creation of a legal model in order to create an institution that would house the objects of the pre-Columbian collection. This would give birth to the Larraín Echeñique Family Foundation, with the aim of creating a museum oriented towards the care, study and dissemination of said collection.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Foundation reached an agreement with the Municipality of Santiago in order to cover the infrastructure and general expenses of the Museum, which opened its doors for the first time in December 1981.

The museum today houses unique works of art that demonstrate American cultural diversity, highlighting its valuable Andean textile collection, with pieces of more than 3000 years old, Chinchorro mummies, the oldest in the world, works in ceramics, metal and stone, true works of art from the Mayans, Aztecs, Andean cultures, ancient peoples of the Amazon and the Caribbean, and an outstanding collection of art from the societies that inhabited present-day Chilean territory.

Activities

Exhibition Chile Before Chile since January 2014.

Temporary exhibition Women: Echoes of the past, voices of today since March 2021.

Works on display

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  Mapuche wood figures.

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  Ceramic effigy jar.

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  Little sculpture of a man.

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  Ceramic sculpture of a ball player of the classical culture of Veracruz.

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  Mayan step dated between 300-900 AD. It was taken from one of the squares in Aguateca. The image commemorates a victory of the ruler of the city: The Jaguar god is represented on the shield of the warrior and two prisoners have their feet tied.

Science dissemination

Since 1985, the museum has published the Bulletin of the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, a Chilean scientific journal indexed in the Web of Science database, as well as in SciELO, Latindex, among others.