The Creation of the National Museum of Colombia (1823–1830): A History of Collections, Collectors, and Museums

Abstract

The National Museum of Colombia was inaugurated on 4 July 1824. This museum was created along with a mining school in a post-revolutionary political context during the wars of independence. Museums in South America created in the early nineteenth century are seen as state formulations embedded in nationalist rhetoric conceived within the newborn states. This paper argues against such postulates through a global scientific-geopolitics perspective. It focuses on the analysis of a broad circulation of knowledge, scientific practices, and individuals between Europe and some of the young Latin American republics. Institutional material and immaterial traces that survive today, such as scientific study collections, suggest the relevance of both individual particulars and official purposes for a museum in which the private and the public spheres converge in a scientific agenda of global character.