Guard it with your life: Gold flies in from Colombia for blockbuster El Dorado show at British Museum

Some works are so valuable they were flown business class with individual security guards
2 October 2013

The works glitter in their cases and moving parts shimmer as you pass. This is the scene at the British Museum where curators are this week starting to install precious gold sent from Colombia for a new show about the master craftsmen of South America.

The best of the works, which date from before the Spanish invaded the continent, are so valuable they were flown business class from the Museo del Oro in Bogotá with individual security guards on American Airlines Cargo. They were never out of sight during the 5,200 mile-journey.

Columbian artefacts are unpacked at the British Museum including two Early Tolima Gold alloy Pectorals 1 BC ñ AD 700 (pictured). Organised with Museo del Oro, Bogot·, the exhibition looks at the diverse cultures of Colombia before the 16th-century arrival of the Spanish.
Lucy Young

About a dozen more crates were carried in the hold. Two hundred pieces, including ceramics and jewellery, are being lent by the gold museum, which owns the world’s best collection of these treasures.

Curator Elisenda Vila Llonch unpacking Columbian artefacts including a Gold alloy 200 BC ñ AD 1300 Calima-Malagana (Yotoco-Malagana) Pectoral plate at the British Museum. Organised with Museo del Oro, Bogot·, the exhibition looks at the diverse cultures of Colombia before the 16th-century arrival of the Spanish.
Lucy Young

Curator Elisenda Vila Llonch said: “Several pieces had more than one person with them for the journey. It’s not only the value of the gold, but its historic value.”

She said it was thrilling to see the show come together at the museum which last hosted an exhibition of pre-Colombian gold in 1978 at its Museum of Mankind site in Piccadilly.

Columbian artefacts are unpacked at the British Museum including (L to R) two Early Tolima Gold alloy Pectorals 1 BC ñ AD 700 and a Gold alloy Spear thrower 200 BC ñ AD 1300. Organised with Museo del Oro, Bogot·, the exhibition looks at the diverse cultures of Colombia before the 16th-century arrival of the Spanish.
Lucy Young

“It’s a wonderful experience opening box by box and seeing these pieces we have studied and written about for so long.”

Maria Alicia Uribe Villegas, director of the Museo del Oro, said some pieces had been seen in London only once before, in the 1978 exhibition, and others have never before been displayed in Britain. “It’s such a wonderful opportunity to be in London again,” Mrs Uribe Villegas said. “I think it’s one of the best exhibitions we will have in our history.”

The British Museum even owns some objects of types the Museo del Oro does not have, or only in small numbers, such as material created by the Quimbaya peoples of central Colombia. About 100 pieces from the British Museum stores will be included in the show, which will focus on six metalworking peoples — the Muisca, Calima, Tairona, Tolima, Zenú and Quimbaya. Both institutions hope for academic discoveries from bringing the two collections together.

00391083: Seated female poporo, Quimbaya, gold alloy, AD600-1100. © The Trustees of the British Museum Beyond El Dorado: power and gold in ancient Colombia

Original plans included borrowing pieces from the other two great collections of pre-Colombian gold, in Madrid and Berlin. But restitution claims by a previous Colombian government led to fears they could be claimed if allowed to travel.

Beyond El Dorado: power and gold in ancient Colombia, sponsored by Julius Baer, opens on October 17 and runs until March 23, admission £10. britishmuseum.org

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