Bad newsColombian Government Pulls 30 to 47 Works From National Museum, Sparking Protests
President Abelardo de la Espriella's culture ministry removed works on LGBTQ+ rights, feminism and political violence from Bogotá's National Museum. A judge has ordered the removed pieces preserved. Reports give the number as 30 or 47.
This story runs on the bad side only. The biggest stories of the day are told on both sides.
Colombia’s government has taken down dozens of works from the permanent collection of the National Museum in Bogotá, and a judge has told it to stop. The two main accounts disagree on how many. El País English counts 30 pieces taken from the permanent exhibition Hacer Sociedad (Making Society). NPR reports 47 works, including paintings and drawings.
What was removed
According to El País, the Ministry of Culture ordered the removal on a Thursday. That was the day President Abelardo de la Espriella gave a speech at the ministry declaring war on what he calls wokeism. The pieces related to the LGBTQ+ movement, feminist leadership, the students who pushed for the 1991 Constitution and two left-wing leaders murdered in 1990. NPR adds works on women’s suffrage, government repression and left-wing guerrillas. It places the removal the day after the speech, a small difference between the two reports.
The museum had no permanent director at the time, and five modern art museums, in Medellín, Cartagena, Barranquilla, Tolima and Roldanillo, said the decision skipped proper technical procedures. The International Council of Museums in Colombia called it a breach of the Code of Ethics for Museums, El País reports. Culture Minister Paola Holguín has said only that the ministry is reassessing the museum’s curatorial approach. She has not explained how the pieces were chosen.
Hundreds of people protested outside the museum over the weekend, according to El País. Riot police used water cannons on demonstrators at night and destroyed an improvised installation of photographs of the removed pieces. On Monday a judge in Bogotá ordered the government to make no further changes and to keep the removed works safe. NPR reports that university students have since occupied the museum’s entrance, holding an open-air class on artistic freedom, and that the president has announced a wider cultural counterrevolution aimed at museums and schools.
The government says the previous administration of Gustavo Petro elevated objects to symbols of national culture that, in its view, represent a specific ideology, El País reports. Neither source says whether the works will return to the galleries. The court order covers further changes and preservation of the removed works, not their display.
