October 18, 2013

Bogotá has a number of free museums and Chandler and I decided to take advantage of a few. We went to the Botero museum in the morning. The museum features a huge collection of paintings, drawings and statues not only from Botero, but also from other international known artists.

Man sitting with pipe by Picasso

Great genius by Max Ernst

Botero is probably the most well known Colombian artists and has a style that is all his own, Boterismo. Botero makes everything chubby and exaggerated. There were chubby people, horse, cats, chubby objects and buildings. It was very interesting.

Dancing couple

Earthquake in Popayan

No need to see the original now

The next museum we visited was the Museo Histórico Policía or the Police Museum. All 18 years olds are required to serve one year with the national police force and we had one such individual as our guide. He showed us a number of confiscated items, historical items and a room of weapons. It was a strange mix, but we had a nice time.

It’s a guitar, no a shotgun, not both!

Cold war James Bond pen gun

October 17, 2013

Despite little sleep for the last two nights, we woke up early and hit the ground running. We didn’t really know what to expect, and we were a little nervous because we had read several accounts of people being mugged and worse.

We headed off to the gold museum, but got a little lost and stopped in a park to look at the map. Immediately, a man approached us and asked if we wanted to go on a graffiti tour. Our guards were up and we immediately said no just trying to get rid of him. He must have realized that and spent about 10 minutes talking about himself, the tour and Bogotá while the other members of the tour gathered. We figured he was legitimate and decided to tag along. Best idea ever.

Bogotá is covered with incredible street art and Crisp, our guide and an artist, knew the artists, their stories and the best locations. We walked for about 3 hours around town. It was a great introduction to the city and its issues. We were also able to get oriented and realized that Bogotá was not as scary as we expected.

Flaming bird

Graffiti fox

Crazy-eyed beast

Bullfighting protest art

We learned that street art is not just spray cans. Many artists use stencils or regular brushes and rollers. Some of the art was beautiful and realistic, while other pieces were wacky or political. There are a lot of truly talented people making art in Bogotá. The level of skill was amazing and the vibrant murals everywhere really gave the city a personality.

Political stencil

Little monster

Colorful graffiti girl

After the tour and lunch, we continued onto our original goal, the museum of gold. El Museo del Oro holds the largest collection in the world of pre-Hispanic gold work. There are two floors of extraordinary pieces.

Beautiful jewelry

Amazing gold work

Monkeys

Gold chicken

There was an interesting movie, which showed the ways that people made the amazing gold items. The more intricate pieces were first made out of wax. The wax was then surrounded by clay and fired. As the clay hardened, the wax melted, leaving a void in the clay. Gold was then melted and poured into the clay mold. When cooled, the clay was broken open, leaving the gold piece. No two pieces were exactly the same, because each mold could only be used once.

Tools for gold work

We were pooped at the end of the day, but it was a great introduction to Colombia.