Funerary mask,

1600–100 BCE

The western portion of present-day Colombia, comprising the northern end of the Andes and the Pacific coast, was home to five thousand years of highly varied artistic production prior to the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spanish. Some evidence of durable architecture and monumental stone sculpture remains for certain cultures and time periods, but most ancient Colombian art that survives today is made of ceramic or metal. To the north, along Colombia’s Caribbean coast, other cultures, such as the Tairona, developed their own artistic styles, some with strong connections to their neighbors in the Andes, and others with more notable relationships to art produced in present-day Panama and the Caribbean. Copper-gold alloys, known today as tumbaga, were worked into dazzling forms in all regions. A selection of such metalwork is on view in the display case behind you.