The Portable Universe
ABOVE: Yotoco circular house model. Calima; Colombia. 200 BC–AD 800.
Gold. © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Los Angeles—Comprising approximately 400 works, including an unprecedented number of loans from the Museo del Oro in Bogota, a groundbreaking exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from May 29–October 2, 2022, will present the diversity and materiality of ancient Colombian cultures.
With the European conquest, Indigenous cultures and knowledge, based on millennia of intellectual efforts, were disregarded as crude superstition.
The Portable Universe: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia is designed to recapture some of that knowledge and to envelop the works on display with life and meaning, inviting visitors into a cultural dialogue that spans both space and time. The project also draws heavily upon contemporary Indigenous understandings to evoke a worldview in which ancient artworks have relevance for today and the future.
The LACMA curatorial team has been working in close collaboration with the Arhuaco of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, who are supporting and engaged with the project as part of a long-term initiative fostering cross-cultural dialogue and knowledge exchange.
The Portable Universe: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia
Until October 2, 2022
ABOVE: Funerary vessel in form of seated thinker, pensador.
Middle Cauca Valley, Colombia. AD 700–1600.
Resist-painted ceramic. H: 23.5 cm.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Muñoz Kramer Collection, gift of Camilla Chandler Frost and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer, inv. M.2007.146.296.
ABOVE: Whistling Vessel with Jaguar Attributes
Calima Yotoco; Calima Region, Colombia. 100 BC–AD 800.
Resist-painted ceramic. W: 24.1 cm.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Muñoz Kramer Collection, gift of Camilla Chandler Frost and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer, inv. M.2007.146.283.