National Museum of Colombia

The National Museum of Colombia was created in 1823, and is one of the oldest in the Americas. It offers its visitors seventeen permanent exhibition halls, in which around 2,500 works and objects are exhibited, symbols of history and national heritage. In its calendar of temporary exhibitions, the Museum presents samples of national and international history, art and archaeology. Additionally, it offers a varied academic and cultural program that includes conferences, concerts, theater and dance presentations, and audiovisual projections, among others.

Its collection is divided into four collections: art, history, archeology and ethnography. Its collection of Colombian, Latin American, and European art includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, installations, and decorative arts from the colonial period to the present. His current headquarters was originally the Cundinamarca Penitentiary, designed by the Danish Thomas Reed, a construction that was ordered by Eustorgio Salgar during his term as president of the United States of Colombia. Opposite the museum is the underground TransMilenio station that bears the same name "Museo Nacional".

The National Museum of Colombia was born at the initiative of Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander, at a time when several battles were being fought to achieve independence.

History

Founded by Law of the first Congress of the Republic on July 28, 1823, the National Museum of Colombia is the oldest museum in the country and one of the oldest in the Americas. For two centuries it has been dedicated to the conservation and dissemination of representative testimonies of the cultural values of the Colombian Nation.

It opened its doors to the public on July 4, 1824, the date on which Vice President General Francisco de Paula Santander declared it officially created, its first director being the Peruvian scientist and antiquarian Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustáriz. Rivero had been hired in May 1822 in Paris by Francisco Antonio Zea, Minister Plenipotentiary of Colombia, in order to establish a mining school and a natural history museum in the capital of the new republic. The National Museum of Colombia was initially installed in the Botanical House, which housed the natural history collection assembled by José Celestino Mutis and cared for by his disciples. Over time, these pieces were joined by others of an archaeological, historical and artistic nature.

Epifanio Garay's bust on the southwest side of the Museum.

Throughout its history, the National Museum of Colombia has occupied various venues. From its foundation and until 1842 it occupied the old Botanical House -today disappeared-; from 1845 to 1913, the building of the Classrooms -Museum of Colonial Art of Bogotá-; from 1913 to 1922, the Rufino Cuervo Passage -today disappeared-; from 1922 to 1944, the Pedro A. López building -today the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development-; and from 1948 to date, the facilities of the former Central Penitentiary of Cundinamarca, known as "Panóptico".

The aforementioned penitentiary, designed by Thomas Reed in the 1850s and built beginning October 1, 1874, was the nation's largest prison for nearly 72 years. However, in 1946 the inmates were transferred to the new La Picota prison and the Government assigned the building to house the National Museum.

The Panopticon, after being restored and adapted under the direction of the architects Manuel de Vengoechea and Hernando Vargas Rubiano, was inaugurated as the headquarters of the National Museum of Colombia on May 2, 1948. In the words of Vargas Rubiano, "the transformation of the so-called "panopticon" The museum was the idea of Matoño Arboleda: several years ago, in the capital's newspapers, the architecture and location of the prison were glossed bitterly, without valid reasons. In defense of it, anticipating its possible demolition, Matoño suggested using the factory in a large national museum. »Since the building has architectural values, the government declared it a National Monument on August 11, 1975.

Between 1989 and 2001, the Integral Restoration Project of the Building was carried out, which culminated in the first semester of 2001 and was officially inaugurated on July 28, with the opening of all the exhibition rooms of the Museum.

Currently, the Special Administrative Units, the National Museum of Colombia and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (Icanh), both dependent on the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, are in charge of the administration, conservation and dissemination of the collections that make up the Museum.

In 2012, the accessibility project was inaugurated, an architectural intervention on the façade and gardens of the Museum, whose objective was to allow access for all audiences on equal terms.

That same year, the Museum formulated the renovation project and began a process of comprehensive renovation of its permanent exhibition spaces, which has made it possible to reflect the diversity of the country and invite dialogue and reflection on who we are, we were and will be as a Nation. The renovation of the Museum already has these new rooms: Memory and Nation (2014), Earth as a Resource (2016), Time without forgetting, Being a territory, Making society (2018), The History of the museum and the museum in history, and the History of the Panopticon (2020).

Collection

It has oil paintings and sculptures by Fernando Botero, Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos, Andrés de Santa María, Fídolo González Camargo, Roberto Páramo, Rómulo Rozo, Marco Tobón Mejía, Francisco Antonio Cano, Gustavo Arcila Uribe, José Domingo Rodríguez, Alejandro Obregon, Enrique Grau, Edgar Negret, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Santiago Martínez Delgado, Ricardo Gómez Campuzano, Roberto Pizano, Guillermo Wiedemann and Álvaro Barrios, among others.

In turn, it preserves the largest iconographic collection of Simón Bolívar in Latin America with numerous oil paintings, drawings and engravings made by José María Espinosa and Pedro José Figueroa, among others.

Sermon on the Mount, by Gustavo Arcila Uribe.

It also houses the marble sculptures Silence and Poetry, a tribute to the Bogota poet José Asunción Silva by Marco Tobón Mejía; The Sermon on the Mount, by Gustavo Arcila Uribe, awarded at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922; the Golpeador del Paraíso, by Rómulo Rozo, awarded in Paris in 1925; and the sculptures Eva and Angustia, by José Domingo Rodríguez.

Ceremony costume, from the sculptor Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar.

Within its international art collection, pieces such as a Greek amphora, Egyptian funerary reliefs, some Flemish and Dutch paintings, more than a hundred pieces of African art and oil paintings by Latin American artists such as Venezuelans Arturo Michelena and Armando Reverón stand out..

Its ethnographic collection includes close to four thousand pieces from all over Colombia and the archaeological collection, with close to ten thousand pieces from all the pre-Hispanic cultures of the country, includes a vault of pre-Columbian goldsmiths.

The historical collection includes numerous pieces not only from Colombia, but also from Latin America, such as the banner used by Francisco Pizarro when he conquered Peru at the beginning of the century XVI; the mantle of one of the Inca Atahualpa's wives; the gold, diamond and pearl crown given to Simón Bolívar in Cuzco and his handwritten testament, among thousands of other objects.

After the Faculty of Sciences of the National University and the Gold Museum of the Banco de la República, with thirty thousand pieces, the National Museum is the third largest public collection in Colombia.

Permanent exhibition halls

The National Museum of Colombia presents the collections of history, art, anthropology and ethnography in seventeen permanent rooms distributed over three floors. The first six are located on the first; from seven to thirteen, in the second; and from fourteen to seventeen, on the third floor. Currently two of the rooms located on the third floor are temporarily closed while they are conditioned in accordance with the Renovation Project started in 2012.

First floor

Room 'Ideology, Art and Industries'.

Room 1 is closed. In room 2 is the Tomb of the Altiplano Nariñense, which reproduces a multiple burial of a cacique from the XIII century with pieces of Narino culture. In room 3, called Time Without Forgetting: Dialogues from the Pre-Hispanic World, pieces from the collection of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History are presented.

Room 4 is dedicated to audiovisual arts and is called Memory supports: technologies and records of public television in Colombia. Room 5 houses the Works in transit and the Visible Reserve of the Ethnography Collection. Room 6 or Bóveda "The Goldsmith's Craft" seeks to introduce visitors to the techniques developed 25 centuries ago in pre-Columbian Colombia.

Second floor

Room 7, Memory and Nation, contains emblematic pieces from the Museum's four collections. Room 8, called Colonial and Republican Goldsmithing, houses silver, gold and stone objects from the Colony, Independence and the XX. Room 9 is called Being Territory. Room 10 is dedicated to Recent Acquisitions and presents the objects that enter the archeology, history, art and ethnography collections.

Room 11 is new, it's called Hacer sociedad and "seeks to reflect diversity" of Colombia and invite a dialogue about the renovation to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2023. Room 12, the Gabinete de Miniaturas, contains pieces from the beginning of the century XIX prepared by José María Espinosa, Pío Domínguez del Castillo and Lucas Torrijos. Room 13, Earth as a resource, seeks to give "multiple perspectives on the occupation, conquest and exploitation of the territory, from 14,000 years ago to the present" through the pieces of their collections.

Third floor

Room 14 is called Panoptic look at art in the National Museum of Colombia, it is located in a large room called the Rotunda that contains some of the large-format works that belong to the collection.

Temporary exhibitions

So far this century there have been, among others, the following:

• "I'll be right back": Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, memories for peace.
  

  Museum Facade in 2010.
• "Picasso in Bogotá", from May 13 to August 13, 2000.
• "Picasso & Cía: Three hand-made books by Picasso and his friends" from 1 to 28 September 2000.
• "Full funeraries and erotic art in ancient Peru: Original pieces of the Rafael Larco Herrera Archaeological Museum in Lima", from December 5, 2000 to February 4, 2001.
• "The return of Humboldt", from March 23 to May 27, 2001.
• "Made Works of European Painting. Rau Collection", from June 28 to September 15, 2002.
• "Rembrandt in Colombia. Recorded", from August 30 to October 27, 2002.
• "Pierre Balmain, a fashion architect (1945-2002)", from 7 November 2002 to 4 January 2003.
• "Semana Santa in Popayán. The procession goes inside" from February 21 to April 3, 2003.
• "The masterpieces of the BBVA Collection: Spanish Painting from the 15th to the 20th centuries", from September 29 to November 14, 2004.
• "Egypt: the passage to eternity (4,000 BC - 135 AD)", from April 8 to July 31, 2005.
• "The terracotta warriors: an immortal army" from June 15 to September 17, 2006.
• "Four centuries of painting in the BBVA Collection", from December 6, 2006 to March 4, 2007.
• "Sipán: The Last Treasure of America", from May 17 to August 31, 2007.
• "The Amazon arrived in Bogotá" from May 14 to August 2, 2009.
• "The stories of a shout: 200 years of being Colombian", from July 3, 2010 to January 16, 2011.
• "A country made football", from December 3, 2011 to April 8, 2012.
• "Gods, Myths and Religion of Ancient Greece. Ceramic Collection of the Louvre Museum", from July 12 to October 13, 2013.
• "1819, a significant year", from July 19 to August 18, 2019.
• "Pintores in times of Independence: Figueroa, Gil de Castro, Espinosa", from November 29, 2019 to March 1, 2020.
• "The jaguar and the butterfly. Chiribiquete's cultural and natural heritage of humanity", from July 17, 2020 to August 31, 2020.
• "Cien for eight hundred years of eight Colombian creators" from October 15, 2020 to January 31, 2021.
• "Travel and return: goods and routes of the Manila Galeon", from March 26, 2021 to May 30, 2021.

• Hip Hop Nation: Colombia at the rhythm of a culture, December 16, 2022 until April 16, 2023.