Museo Nacional del Ecuador (MuNa)
Ecuador's national museum, with pre-Hispanic goldwork and Quito School painting in the Casa de la Cultura.
The national museum grew out of the collections assembled from 1969 by the Banco Central del Ecuador, which bought and recovered archaeological material and colonial art on a large scale. Responsibility passed to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage in 2010, and after several years of reorganisation the museum reopened under the name MuNa in 2018. Its holdings run to more than a thousand archaeological pieces and several hundred colonial paintings and sculptures, alongside nineteenth-century, modern and ethnographic material.
Displays occupy about 5,000 square metres in the curved concrete Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana building on Avenida Patria, designed by the architect René Denis Zaldumbide. The permanent route begins with ceramics and metalwork from the Valdivia, Chorrera, Jama-Coaque, La Tolita and Inca periods, including the gold sun mask from La Tolita that has become a national emblem. A second sequence covers colonial religious art, with works associated with Miguel de Santiago and the sculptor Caspicara, followed by rooms used for temporary shows.
Highlights
- The gold sun mask from La Tolita, an emblem of Ecuador
- Pre-Hispanic goldwork, ceramics and platinum objects
- Quito School painting and sculpture, including Caspicara
- Housed in the modernist Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana
![[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]title QS:P1476,en:"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"label QS:Len,"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/500px-Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
