Gold Museum, Bogotá

Gold Museum

Museo del Oro
Logo of the Gold Museum with the official seal of the Bank of the Republic.
Established	1939
Location	Carrera 6 # 15-82 (Parque Santander) Bogotá, Colombia
Director	Clara Isabel Botero
Public transit access	Museo del Oro Also Bogota's bus system.
Website	Gold Museum

The Muisca raft is the main piece in the Offering Boat Room.

Calima culture heart-shaped pectoral as displayed in the temporary exhibition of Gold Museum's exhibits at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

The Gold Museum (Spanish: El Museo del Oro) is a museum located in Bogotá, Colombia.

Overview

The museum displays a selection of Pre Hispanic gold work — the biggest collection in the world — in its exhibition rooms on the second and third floors. Together with other pottery, Rock geologystone, shell, wood and textile archaeological objects, these items, made of what to indigenous cultures was a sacred metal, testify to the life and thought of different societies which inhabited what is now known as Colombia before contact was made with Europe.

History

In 1939, the Bank of the Republic began helping to protect the archaeological patrimony of Colombia. The object known as Poporo Quimbaya was the first one in a collection. It has been on exhibition for 65 years.

The museum houses the famous Muisca's golden raft found in Pasca in 1969, that represents the El Dorado ceremony. 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 and feathers.

After a decade of works, 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 pieces are on display in their expanded building. There are bilingual descriptions of almost all exhibits. On the first floor is the museum's main entrance, the shop and a restaurant, The Gold Museum Restaurant and Café.

On the second floor the exposition begins, the Main Room is called People and Gold in pre-Hispanic Colombia. Through its glass cases it displays the goldsmith work of the different cultures which inhabited Colombia before the Spanish people arrived; the room is divided into different halls for every culture; Calima, Quimbaya, Muisca, Zenu, Tierradentro, San Augustín, Tolima, Tayrona and Uraba, and a special room called After Columbus (Despues de Colón).

The exposition continues on the third floor, with The Flying Chamanic and The Offering. The first shows the process of Chaman's 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.

See also

• Bank of the Republic Quimbaya museum

External links

• (English) Official website
• (Spanish) Official website
• (Spanish) www.museodeloro.web.com.co Visita virtual
• 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