Colombia’s government under fire over removals at the National Museum

The National Museum of Colombia is rarely at the center of national debate, but this weekend it became the main focal point of controversy. On Thursday, alarm bells rang for many citizens when they saw that part of the nation had been erased from the galleries displaying objects, documents and photographs selected by curators to represent Colombia’s history and diversity.

The Ministry of Culture translated Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella’s rhetoric about the country’s conservative values into policy and ordered the removal of 30 pieces from the permanent exhibition Hacer Sociedad (Making Society). They included items related to the LGBTQ+ movement, feminist leadership, the students who pushed for the 1991 Constitution, and two left-wing leaders murdered in 1990. “It’s a mutilated museum,” said Andrés Góngora, a professor and museum anthropologist.

On Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of citizens gathered outside the museum, the former national panopticon, to protest. “Censorship is for cowards,” “Long live queer and trans art,” and “This is not a culture war, it is a war on culture,” read the placards, the last slogan referring to the battle De la Espriella vowed to wage in his presidential oath. While the daytime demonstrations remained peaceful, riot police used water cannons against protesters at night and destroyed an improvised installation made of brick towers displaying photographs of the 30 removed objects.

The cultural sector responded from across the country. The modern art museums of Medellín, Cartagena, Barranquilla, Tolima and Roldanillo (the Rayo Museum) called on Culture Minister Paola Holguín to guarantee the independence and autonomy of artistic institutions. The decision to remove the pieces, they argued, was taken without following the proper technical procedures and at a time when the National Museum did not have a permanent director.

The International Council of Museums in Colombia, meanwhile, said that the removal of the works amounted to a “breach of the Code of Ethics for Museums.” By Sunday night, the National Museum was still under the protection of riot police. On Monday morning, a judge in Bogotá ordered the government to refrain from making any further changes and to preserve the removed works.

Minister Holguín addressed the removal of the pieces without explaining how they were selected or why the operation was carried out so abruptly, leaving empty spaces on the museum’s walls. She only said that the Ministry of Culture is reassessing the museum’s curatorial approach. On the very day the works were suddenly removed, President De la Espriella delivered a speech at the Ministry of Culture in which he declared war on “wokeism,” or progressive culture, which he accuses of denying “the biological differences between men and women,” glorifying terrorists, and falsifying “history by reducing it to conflicts between oppressors and the oppressed.”

After two days of protests, Holguín has shown no sign of backing down over the removal of the works. Quite the opposite. Late on Sunday, she published a statement on social media alleging that those who had called for the demonstrations were the very people who had “turned culture into a tool for historical deconstruction, the glorification of crime and the revictimization of victims.”

The message was aimed at the previous government. Since taking office on August 7, the administration has argued that former president Gustavo Petro elevated certain objects to the status of cultural symbols even though, in its view, they do not carry such significance and instead represent a specific ideology. One of them is the hat of Carlos Pizarro, the M-19 guerrilla leader who signed a peace agreement in 1989 and was assassinated a few months later aboard an airplane while running for president.

“My father’s legacy is a legacy of peace,” María José Pizarro, Carlos Pizarro’s daughter and a former senator aligned with Petro, said critically outside the museum. Petro, who was himself a member of the M-19, did not attend the protest at the National Museum, though several of his former officials did, including former environment minister Susana Muhamad.

The backlash, however, has not come only from the left. It has also drawn criticism from liberal circles and even parts of the traditional right, as reflected in public letters signed by dozens of figures.

“I disagree with removing pieces that tell part of Colombia’s history,” wrote Federico Hoyos, a former congressman from the Democratic Center party.

“A museum is not a political platform. If a government rearranges galleries so that the past validates its own views, that is not memory; it is propaganda in a display case,” said Juan Manuel Galán, leader of the New Liberalism party and the son of Luis Carlos Galán, another presidential candidate assassinated during the 1990 election campaign.

“How can you tell the story of the conquest of citizenship without showing those who had to fight for it?” asked María Paz Gaviria, an art curator and former Liberal Party Senate candidate. She specifically criticized the removal of the Seventh Ballot, the paper ballot through which citizens demanded a new constitution in 1990. (María Paz is the daughter of César Gaviria, the former president who promoted the constituent process that led to the 1991 Constitution.)

For some analysts, the culture war being waged by De la Espriella is merely a continuation of efforts undertaken by other far-right presidents across the continent. In the United States, Donald Trump has engaged in a long-running dispute with the Smithsonian Institution, arguing that it has strayed from “American and Western values,” particularly through its treatment of racism.

Argentine President Javier Milei and Chilean President José Antonio Kast have pursued their own battles as well. In February, the Argentine leader demanded that the saber of independence hero José de San Martín be removed from the National Historical Museum, arguing that it would be better preserved in a military unit. Kast’s party, meanwhile, has promoted a “Museum of Truth” project aimed at vindicating Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état.

Colombia’s National Museum has itself become a symbol. For the De la Espriella government, it is a platform for its “culture war.” For its critics, it is a place to defend the diversity of the Colombian nation.

“The Museum is a place for debating the nation’s pasts and future, not a political-religious text enforcing a single way of thinking,” historian Gonzalo Sánchez, former director of the National Center for Historical Memory, said during the protests. “The museum as a space for dialogue stands at the opposite extreme from totalitarianism.”

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