Gold Museum Research Articles

Gold, cocaine, montage: Latin American sacrifice zones in Michael Taussig’s My Cocaine Museum

ABSTRACT This paper proposes to read Michael Taussig’s My Cocaine Museum (2004) as a forerunner of recent research on the Latin American extractive zone (Gómez-Barris). In his remarkable book, the Australian anthropologist writes on the relation between two prime materials that have an important impact on the past and present of Colombia: gold and cocaine. Focusing on a region close to the Pacific Coast, more specifically the gold-mining village of Santa María, Taussig’s creative work of nonfiction explores the fact that multiple forms of violence (ecological, colonial, extractivist, political) converge in the Timbiquí region. It also makes an innovative move by including cocaine within the discussion on capitalist extractivism. Returning to Taussig’s book is also productive at this stage because it offers a theoretical and artistic starting point for thinking through the social ecologies and the resistance encountered in the extractive region of the Colombian South-West Pacific. Ultimately, this paper argues, My Cocaine Museum constitutes an example of anti-extractivist non-fiction, as it uses montage techniques to create shock, wonder, and hope, to establish unexpected connections between the past and the present, and to revitalise both the Timbiquí region and the official Colombian Gold Museum.

Preliminary Assessment of the Geological and Mining Heritage of the Golden Quadrilateral (Metaliferi Mountains, Romania) as a Potential Geotourism Destination

The Metaliferi Mountains (Western Romania) are known worldwide as the richest gold region in Romania and hosts for numerous porphyry and epithermal deposits. In these mountains, mining for gold dates back to Roman and even pre-Roman times. The Golden Quadrilateral constitutes a remarkable example of an area having a significant geological and mining heritage. The main purposes of this work are to emphasize this heritage, to present, for the first time, an assessment of the geological and mining heritage of the Golden Quadrilateral as a possible geotourism destination, and to point out the important role that geotourism could have in the sustainable development of local communities. To achieve our goals, the features of thirteen sites are presented, and two geotourism itineraries are proposed. A quantitative assessment of the geosites’ capacity to support scientific, educational, and geotourism/recreational uses indicates that the Golden Quadrilateral presents a high potential not only for scientific studies but, also, for enhancement of the public understanding of science; geotourism could be part of the development strategy of rural areas. The two museums (Gold Museum and Gold Mining Museum) can have an important contribution both to the geo-education of visitors and in promoting the sustainable development of the region.

Simulation and Optimization of Emergency Evacuation in Gold Museum Based on AnyLogic

This article combines the characteristics of the gold museum building structure, facilities distribution and personnel distribution characteristics, uses AnyLogic to complete the museum’s environmental modeling and visitor behavior modeling, simulates the completed tourist evacuation model, analyzes the evacuation process of personnel, and responds to potential safety hazards. The evacuation process was simulated and optimized, and an improvement plan was proposed. Finally, reference suggestions were made for the tourist evacuation plan of the Gold Museum. It provides a way of thinking and method for safe evacuation in scenic spots, and has certain practical application value.

Formas de ver y exhibir el patrimonio arqueológico indígena en dos museos de Bogotá (1938-1953)

<p>Este artículo presenta un análisis histórico sobre la creación y los primeros quince años de historia de dos museos en Bogotá: el Museo Arqueológico Nacional, fundado en 1938 y el Museo del Oro del Banco de la República, cuya colección se inició en 1939. A partir de la indagación en los contextos de formación de ambos<br />museos, así como de las formas de valoración y exhibición de lo que en ese momento se concibió como patrimonio arqueológico indígena, no solamente se pretenden comprender las circunstancias de ese pasado reciente del que aún hoy somos herederos directos, sino también ganar un lugar de observación que nos<br />permita considerar críticamente las maneras como actualmente se presentan esos vestigios materiales ante nuestra mirada.</p>

A Method for Development of Ecomuseums in Taiwan

One component of the new museology is the ecomuseum, which is intended to preserve cultural/natural heritage and the local landscape in situ, and involves community participation and needs associated with community development. Since the ecomuseum concept originated in Western Europe, ecomuseums must be adapted or localized to various socio-economic environments. In the 2000s, two mining ecomuseums were established in New Taipei City—the Gold Museum and the Houtong Coal Mine Ecological Park. In the early 2010s, two more ecomuseums were established—the Daxi Wood Art Ecomuseum and the Togo Art Museum. More than the mining ecomuseums, the Daxi Wood Art Ecomuseum emphasized community participation and the vision of the Togo Art Museum was led by the community. Based on an analysis of the Houtong Coal Mine Ecological Park, the Daxi Wood Art Ecomuseum and the Togo Art Museum, this study elucidates the various mechanisms of the development of ecomuseums in Taiwan. Ecomuseums should be interconnected with the community and the environment. The three major functions of ecomuseums (community participation, local development, and in-situ preservation) can promote sustainable development. This study uses the “creativity triangle” concept with a three-year cycle of development as an analytical tool. The concept was modified to include three stages of development, which are “estimation”, “preparation”, and “operation”; six steps and 11 tasks are proposed. Despite the unique circumstances of each ecomuseum, this study provides an overview of the development processes and provides a basis for making recommendations for establishing other ecomuseums in Taiwan.

Weaving potential space and acculturation: Art therapy at the museum

Abstract Contemporary museum paradigms that address social responsibility, value diverse interpretations and promote communication create novel possibilities for cultural connections and exchanges. Evidencing these new roles, the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) in Bogotá, Colombia, offered an art therapy programme to serve internally displaced indigenous women (IDIW) of Wounaan and Guambiano ethnicities. The qualities of museums as safe holding environments able to serve in processes of acculturation, surfaced in the course of the art therapy programme. This article bridges discourses related to museums, immigrant populations and the object relations construct of potential space through the common denominator of the interplay between internal and external realities.

A novel approach to documenting artifacts at the Gold Museum in Bogota

We present our work on novel digitizing techniques to create virtual exhibitions in the context of the Gold Museum in Bogotá, Colombia, a world renown space for precious pre-Colombian gold artifacts. In order to solve issues related to high specular reflection in gold artifacts, we developed a multi-spectral approach that solves some of the shortfalls of many commercial scanners. We also integrated commercial haptic devices into a new virtual installation that allows visitors to touch, hear, and see virtual approximations of the real objects. As an evaluation methodology, we compare the results of a scanner with normal light with our approach, and we also present results from user studies on our virtual installation.

An XPS study of tarnishing of a gold mask from a pre-Columbian culture

The tarnishing originated on a hammered gold mask was analysed. Red tarnishing was observed after three years of storage in an indoor environment in the Gold Museum of Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia. Silver sulphide (Ag 2S) and silver sulphate (Ag 2SO 4) compounds were identified as the origin of the tarnishing phenomenon, which is attributed to environmental contamination. Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques were used.

Golden alienation

Is Prehispanic gold a commodity or a gift? In the process of becoming a first-tier icon of Colombian identity, the Gold Museum in Bogotá has attempted to formulate an answer to this thorny question. Far from encouraging the valuation of gold artifacts as ancient commodities related to mundane aspects of social life, the Museum has focused its curatorial mission on enhancing the symbolic and spiritual meaning of its archaeological collections. In this article, I trace back the historical reasons leading the Museum to take such a path at the risk of favoring an essentialized understanding of Prehispanic goldwork in the present. Although maintaining this choice in a multicultural nation such as the one the Republic of Colombia officially claims to be today is a problematic decision, the Museum can build upon a refined understanding of the materiality of gold to overcome this impasse and bridge past and present in a socially productive way.

A Few of His Favorite Things

logical odyssey, sailing away from the fleet to chart a stretch of foreboding darkness low on one horizon. Judging from reports, he has found a coastline there, a place of curling mist and whispering shadows where, as in any good folktale, things both are and aren't what they seem. In any event he shows no sign of returning, and navigates amid the mangrove roots with a compass inscribed W. Benjamin and an attraction to repulsion. This is his latest dispatch, and rather than a conventional map or treatise he is sending a cabinet of curiosities, filled with a welter of stories, observations, and artifacts dredged up through his passing. As the introductory note informs us, we readers are to take it as a response to the bourgeois museum form, epitomized by the gold museum in Colombia's central bank in Bogoti. There, fragments of pre-Colombian splendor lie undisturbed by reminders of the many aching hands that returned wealth from New World to Old, the past contained within the bank secured against the past that built it. Taussig's figurative museum, by contrast, practices a reverse alchemy of returning gold to the blood and mud of its production, and situating that impure mass next to a similar one for Colombia's current forbidden treasure, cocaine.

More Chibcha textiles

In 1985, a short article of mine on Chibcha textiles in the British Museum (the Bunch collection) appeared in Antiquity (Broadbent 1985). In July of that year, while in Bogotá for the 45th International Congress of Americanists, I had an opportunity to examine a fine new collection of textiles in the Gold Museum (Museo del Oro) from the museum of Pasca, a small town near the southern edge of Chibcha territory. According to Cardale (1986). they are said to come from caves on the Páramo de Pisba. Although my analysis of them was somewhat sketchy, the time available being very limited, they seem to confirm the distinctive features I observed in the Bunch collection. I was allowed to take small samples of three of them for radiocarbon dating at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) dating facility. It therefore seems appropriate to present this short note as a sequel to the previous paper.