Museo de Américas

I was not quite sure what to expect when I decided to go to the Museum of the Americas; I did not know how the Spanish people who were once the colonizers of Latin America would portray the artworks and artifacts from that region...most of which were stolen. The museum was a long metro ride away, the last stop of line 3 near the university. It was a hip side of Madrid that I hadn't seen and that few tourists ventured to. The museum itself is a gorgeous, tall building with several courtyards with fountains. It was too impressive for its distance from central Madrid. I was one of 3 or 4 people there and it made me feel bad that such a gorgeous building was not being used as much as it should be. For the first time since arriving in Spain, I enjoyed the service the museum guards provided. I met one woman named Clara who actually took the trouble to help me locate all the Incan artifacts (a big deal considering they were many and scattered throughout the entire museum. The guards were mostly elderly women who enjoyed seeing a young person in the museum and chatted nicely with me as they reiterated what "incredible things the museum had." They were really right. The museum was incredible, but not in the way the term is  normally used. I was mostly amazed at how primitive the feel of the museum was. The rooms were dark with bright spotlights illuminating pottery shards and gold pieces. Time periods from 5000 BCE to 1400 CE were organized randomly, haphazardly, and side-by-side in glass cases. The supplemental information was in the form of European paintings made during the colonial era to explain the artifacts. WOW. I could not believe that such racist paintings from a period hundreds of years ago were used to explain hundreds of different cultures that spanned thousands of years. I was shocked. And I was more shocked that it was not recognized by anyone else in the museum. They looked at the pieces like they were simply cool artifacts that were quite "developed" for the time. It was infuriating but also so exciting because it reflected the exact phenomenon that I am covering in my thesis. The Spanish are proud of their collection, which is worth noting. They are trying to get their culture out there to the public, but they have a long way to go as far as museum curating and cultural studies go.