Museo de Oro, Bogota, Columbia (May 19, 2026)
“You MUST visit the Gold Museum when you’re in Bogota. It was the best thing I did when I was there and I almost skipped it,” said Jen Nash when we were visiting in Mexico (see related post). You bet!
“But first, let me take a selfie …” with Felipe, my guide.
Today is museum day. Rather than trying to do all of them poorly, we selected two to do in depth. The first was Museo Nacional. Bogota’s National museum rich in history, art, and culture. It is considered one of Bogota’s premier museums and free to visit on Sunday. Yay!
Striking first image as we enter the museum. I love the human form.
Bogota’s National Museum used to be a prison. No kidding. I love this. If it were up to me, we’d all adopt Finland’s rehabilitation program (“an institution with minimal security”) and help people rather than turn them into hardened criminals after their first prison sentence. But what would we do with all the current FOR PROFIT jails we have throughout the country?
Why not turn each of them into a museum and help continue to education our citizens with incredible exhibits from indigenous people to our truly great moments in history when we did what was right rather than what was easy. Today was an inspiration around this approach and what’s possible when you convert a prison into a museum displaying your most prominent art and culture.
And this was “just” the National Museum of Bogota. Now we get to the GOLD.
Museo de Oro (Gold Museum)
When I think of gold, I think of words like “money” and “power” which are very much in synch with the Spanish colonizers. But not the indigenous people of Columbia. Indigenous people used gold primarily for it’s shine. Gold was the color of the sun and when you created something using this material, it reflected the sun in a God-like way. Therefore, much of the artifacts were the depictions of what these people saw as sacred and holy (in contrast to “money” and “power”).
This is one of the few person-realistic masks I saw. Most were like this:
And yet, you can see why the Spanish invaders went crazy for all this gold. Yes, it’s beautiful. And when your context is “money” and “power” all of this abundance of gold indicated that these conquerors were in the right place. The proverbial “juice” was worth the “squeeze” as they say. As your scouting the world, you’re looking for which areas of the world are worth “controlling” and seeing the massive amount of gold on display certainly attracted unwanted attention.
But this museum wasn’t only about gold. Sure, it’s the main attraction and in the name itself, but there’s actually a whole lot more once you work your way through the gold displays. The thing is, there is … SO … MUCH … GOLD. It’s broken down by individual regions of Columbia, indigenous tribes, and focal points of their gods. Some were birds because they flew high above and saw from a unique perspective. While others were snakes circling inward toward infinity. It just keeps going and going and going!
And I’m not even doing this museum justice. It’s like walking into a history book and browsing page by page. Why this shape? What’s happening here with this helmet? Why does this necklace show the same figure in a repeating fashion? And so it goes. The museum anticipates the question, shares a write-up and that leads you to the next exhibit. They even have a closed room where you listen to the chants that you would have as indigenous people celebrate their god.
It was so well done. And I’m really glad I came. Besides, outside, I could enjoy some tomfoolery of my own:
Wow! Way more effort than expected. Time to be back at Kwons ASAP!
