Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn 2007

By Forrest D. Colburn, a teacher at the City University of New York and at INCAE, Latin America's premier graduate school of management.

Introduction:
Befitting its rich cultural history, Peru has many museums. Most of these are in the capitol, Lima, which is home to a third of the country's population. (One of the quirks on Latin America is the excessive concentration of the population in the capitols.) Among these museums is the wonderful Museo del Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (Museum of the Central Bank of Peru). It has a splendid and diverse collection: pre-Columbian artifacts, paintings and sculpture, folk art, and numismatic material, the latter housed in a separate building. With this breadth, the museum gives a glimpse into the change and continuity of Peruvian culture over the centuries. The role the museum plays in Peru is also telling. With so much contention about the international market for antiquities and for other coveted "cultural property," it is illuminating to visit museum in countries like Peru that are demanding strict controls. In Lima, objects are exhibited and appreciated for their beauty and, more importantly, for the pride they instill in national identity.
The museum is located in the historical center of Lima and is housed in a grand building that was long home of the Central Bank. It was established in 1980 and opened to the public in 1982. Its collection derives from many sources. Fine Nazca ceramics and many paintings came from the Central Bank itself, which purchased them long ago for decorative purposes. An important group of paintings came from a bankrupt bank that was taken over by the Central Bank. A large collection of pre-Columbian artifacts that was returned by the United States government because the material had been illegally removed from Peru was also turned over to the museum. More recently, there have been donations. Finally, the museum is custodian of two long-term loans, each for a ten-year period. one of these consists of pre-Columbian gold artifacts and the second of folk art.
For nearly twenty-five years, the museum was led by a historian named Cecilia Bakula. Under her formative tenure, artifacts were exhibited as precious works of art, although the emphasis of the museum was to showcase objects as cultural products and symbols of Peru. This emphasis continues and, in fact, has become more pronounced. Presently there is neither sufficient space nor funds to alter the presentation of objects or to provide them with greater cultural context through more comprehensive didactic material. Despite these limitations, the staff takes pride in their ability to show a cultural continuity in peru, and they work hard to bring Peruvians of all ages and social strata into the museum.