Bogota has a great selection of museums. Most are located in the La Candelaria, and El Centro districts. I've only been to four so far, but they've each been great:
1. Museo Nacional: Chronicles the history of the country from its earliest inhabitants to present day through art. I needed two full afternoons to see everything in this museum. My favorite exhibits were of the ancient poetry and modern Latin artists (
Fernando Botero;
Andres de Santa Maria,
Alejandro Obregon)
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| Cute Courtyard inside the walls of the museum |
2. Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogota (MAMBO): I liked the modern art museum a lot. It was a little hard to find because the entire street in front of the museum (calle 26) is completely torn up due to transmillenio construction. The museum is three stories and has a basement. All of the exhibits were by Latin American artists. A few notable ones that I remember were
Nacho Lopez, and
Graciela Iturbide. The latter did an interresting exhibit entitled "Frida Kahlo's Bathroom." The following quote by Frida Kahlo introduced the exhibit: "Cada (tic-tac) es un segundo de la vida que pasa, huye, y no se repite. Y hay en ella tanta intensidad, tanto interes, que el problema es solo saberia vivir: que cada uno lo resuelva como pueda."
3. Museo de Botero: This was by far my favorite museum, and it was free to get in! Fernando Botero is a Colombian painter whose paintings are infamous because everything he paints is obese (people, nature, objects, animals). His works were comprised of oil on canvas, bronze sculptures and charcoal drawings. The museum also had works by other famous modern artists like Picasso and Matisse:
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| Courtyard inside the museum |
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| Botero's version of the mona lisa |
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| Botero's la pareja (love it!) |
4.
Museo del Oro: This museum showcases gold artifacts from all over Colombia, and there's a ton! of it. I decided to go the museum on a cloudy afternoon after class, and the second I stepped off the transmilenio I was faced with a torrential downpour that literally made the street look like a lake. After waiting for 30 minutes in the station to see if the rain would let up, I gave up and made a run for it. Needless to say my shoes got soaking wet...luckily by the time I left the museum the rain had stopped and I went home to a hot shower.
I would say the most interesting thing I learned at this museum was that indigenous participated in some unique drug activities. Priests used to inhale a hallucinatory substance called "yopo," in order to achieve elevated states of awareness. Coca leaves were and are currently chewed in the mouth with lime in order to increase its stimulating effects. Another interesting and very true indigenous belief: time was thought of as being cyclical like a spiral, inspired by natural repetitive events such as the movements of the stars, animals reproducing and women's periods. All in all it was really cool, and well worth the wet visit!
