{"id":107,"date":"2011-06-02T00:33:14","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T00:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archaeology.sa\/?p=107"},"modified":"2011-06-02T00:34:18","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T00:34:18","slug":"sacred-gold-pre-hispanic-art-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/?p=107","title":{"rendered":"Sacred Gold: Pre-Hispanic Art in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>bilbao. The conquistadors marched across the Americas in search of gold and glory, seizing plenty of both as they killed or converted the indigenous populations.<\/p>\n

Few gold and silver artefacts escaped the Spaniards\u2019 melting pots. The Museo del Oro del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica in Bogot\u00e1 has the largest collection of surviving indigenous gold \u00adobjects in the world, spanning 2,500 years up to the Spanish conquest in the late-15th century.
\n<\/p>\n

Almost 40 years after Bilbao\u2019s Museo de Bellas Artes first mounted a show of gold and \u00adsilver objects from the bank\u2019s collection, the Colombian museum has lent 253 objects.<\/p>\n

These \u00adinclude bracelets, necklaces, crowns and breastplates, masks, votive figures and anthropomorphic sculptures, which celebrate the technical prowess of Pre-Hispanic civilisations.<\/p>\n

On display will be precious metals fashioned as fabulous animals and man-animals through to abstract designs and those inspired by nature. The \u201cGolden People\u201d or \u201cLa gente dorada\u201d section refers to the legend of \u201cEl Dorado\u201d, the name given by the conquistadors to a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and tossed gold and emeralds into a lagoon as offerings to the gods. More than 65 golden snakes, frogs, jaguars, bats, birds, lizards and snails are featured in the Fabled Animals section, which explores the symbolic associations invested in animals.<\/p>\n

The concept of the half man-half beast, for example, ape men with tails or fish-men, was a popular image, and the Man-Animal section examines how they may be linked to the shaman and his presumed supernatural powers. Abstraction and Nature explores the desire to represent forms in both the abstract and figurative and the subtle balance achieved by artisans, and Universe of Forms features 35 \u00adobjects that include geometric elements, illustrating how the ancient artists made a visual language seen in sculpture today. According to Javier Viar, the director of the Bilbao museum, the show fulfils the institution\u2019s objective to \u201cshow cultural products of high artistic quality that have little to do with the kind of supports usually associated with art, such as painting, sculpture, drawing and engraving\u201d.<\/p>\n

The museum aims to push the boundaries of the content usually shown in fine art museums \u201cand acknowledge the artistic status of other forms of expression as being as worthy of attention as the more traditional forms\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

The show is sponsored by Fundaci\u00f3n BBK, the charitable arm of the Spanish bank Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa. Emily Sharpe Categories: Archaeology & Ancient art<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bilbao. The conquistadors marched across the Americas in search of gold and glory, seizing plenty of both as they killed or converted the indigenous populations. Few gold and silver artefacts escaped the Spaniards\u2019 melting pots. The Museo del Oro del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica in Bogot\u00e1 has the largest collection of surviving indigenous gold \u00adobjects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archaeology.sa\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}