INVESTIGACIóN Y MUSEO: MUSEO DE HISTORIA NATURAL DE COLOMBIA 1822-1830

The Colombian Politic Constitution, reformed in 1991, stipulates the notion of patrimony as a “constitutive asset of the national identity”. The articulation of a cultural policy within the Law397 from 1997, concerns thus and among others the ‘museum-institution’. It provides a new momentum to the configuration of this public establishment in Colombia. To comprehend the contemporaryColombian museum question would begin with a study of its historical ethos. Hence, the object of the research accomplished turns towards the origins of the first museum-institution in the country: the Bogota Natural History Museum. This museum, founded in 1823, precedesin its creation the actual Colombian National Museum. It is argued that this establishment is a post-revolutionary ‘museum-institution’, embodied by the will of a national government, forged by the experience of French scientific personnel and with a purpose of pursuing the progress of the new Nation. The elements of the methodology that comprise this historical research in a firstacademical phase are hereby presented.