The National Museum of Colombia is not the tourist trap you would think
it might be. At least when I was there I didn’t see any other tourists
besides me and the gringa to whom I am married. The museum is in a
section of Bogota called La Macarena not far north of La Candelaria and
close to the financial district on Carrera 7. By the way, if you
continue up the rather steep hill that forms the block behind the
museum, and persist for another block up the hill, you will come to a
street replete with all manner of restaurants, most of which appear to
accept credit cards.
If you get off from the Transmilenio at Calle 26 and exit north,
you can go two blocks east and be at the National Museum. You may
experience some doubt, but when in doubt, go left—there is a stair left
of the Juan Valdez that will lead you through what might appear from a
distance to be an impassable building, and then you’ll see a fortress
presiding in the foreground: that’s the Museo Nacional.
I went in search of a free concert, but it being the national
museum and the local pass-time being to put things off or just cancel
them (just ask the mayor of Bogota), the thing was canceled. Well, you
always need to have a backup plan; the Museo Nacional is only 3,000
COPs so I forked over the cash, stashed my suspicious umbrella in the
lockers, and headed into the crypt.
The first thing you encounter—after the obligatory busts of Bolivar
and Santander—is a meteorite of rather impressive dimensions resting at
the juncture of the three wings that form the galleries of this cross-
shaped building. I though it a nice gesture to have the
extra-terrestrial connection first. As you walk through the first four
galleries (pre-conquest you have two long galleries and two small
rooms), you also notice the damp. The damp is due to the fact that you
are in the dungeon: the national museum being in a building that used
to be the jail, and an interesting bit of architecture it is with the
long views between the thick, whitewashed pillars and the sepulchral
arches.
I found the collection in the first section meager, well spaced (as
in spread out), interesting but rudimentary. The burial chambers they
have replicated (in the smaller rooms) are the best part—rather creepy
actually, but then, what else is the point of a burial chamber? One
couldn’t help wishing the exhibit involved more burial chambers full of
the ancient dead with all the accouterments, since otherwise there is a
disappointing and definite lack of atmosphere to these first
collections.
More than disappointing, though, it is to be wondered at that more
pre-Columbian artifacts were not to be found, especially that the
exhibits did not include reconstructions of villages, huts, and more
general groupings of collections. It is true that there are a lot of
different native groups for the museum to document, but the museum has
a great deal of space it could use. Even if the real trove is all
locked up in the gold museum, some scaled replicas—such as they have of
La Pinta, La Niña y La Santa Maria—would not be entirely inappropriate.
Unfortunately, one did not get much of a sense of the life and
conditions of the people of Colombia’s past. Or, alas, the sense that
these people mattered too much.
With the conquest, the museum gets going: we had more color,
varieties of artifacts, music, and galleries that did not yawn as
emptily (though there is still plenty of room, there is no lack of
space in the dungeons of the Museo Nacional). It is a curious contrast,
and one that reinforces the notion that in Colombia the sense of an
ancient national heritage is not emphasized the way it is in a place
like Mexico City, or as in Iceland where you feel, upon entering the
national museum, that you have stepped into a treasure chest. A museum
ought to feel a bit more like a treasure chest and less like an
under-supplied trading post.
Of course, the exhibit at the Museo Nacional is housed in a very
large building, and if you go to a museum to muse—I like to muse at
musea—then there is much to be said for having stretches of real estate
to oneself for reflection and contemplation. What is lacking, perhaps,
at the Museo Nacional is not so much a lack of clutter but a lack of
organic connections withing the exhibit. The objects are all placed in
chronological order, but without further apparent organizing principles
(well, there are a few things grouped in themes, but very few). This
does little to aid in the interpretation and significance of the facts
of history: which is the real business of the study of history. So you
have one damn thing after the other, as Henry Ford put it, and it would
seem that to the interested parties history would consist in a little
more than that which Our Ford believed.
For all the dissatisfactions, the museum contains many valuable and
interesting artifacts, constitutes a pretty impressive portrait gallery
of the leadership of Colombia from the age of the Revolution till the
middle of the previous century, and is a pleasant place to while away a
few hours every so often. It is curious how the exhibit runs out at the
time when the museum was founded—true, there are more contemporary
paintings and sculpture from recent times, but the political and
historical focus completely vanishes near the end of the 1940’s. But
along with the two former jail cells left to suggest a time when the
museum was still the clink, these curious twists just add to the charm.
For the price, you can’t beat it. The Museo Nacional is worth going
to, and if one is interested in the history of Colombia, in the
contemplation of curious, beautiful, interesting, macabre, and even of
objects from outer space, it is certainly not a bad place to go
searching.