Renovation of Bolivia's national archaeology museum gives repatriated treasures pride of place

The Museo Nacional de Arqueología de Bolivia (Munarq), one of the country’s oldest museums, has reopened in La Paz after a year-long renovation. Its new permanent exhibition, Raíces eternas, legados vivos (Eternal Roots, Living Legacies), brings together 395 artefacts spanning more than 11,000 years. Highlights include Saphi, the mummy of a young girl repatriated from the United States in 2019, as well as an illa, an Andean stone figure stolen from Bolivia in 1858 and returned by a Swiss museum in 2014. Organised into five thematic galleries and two chronological ones, the exhibition brings together archaeological objects dating from 10,000BC to the Inca period, around 1450. It chronicles the ways that the pre-Hispanic past continues in rituals and gestures that remain part of daily life. “Many of our customs come from the pre-Hispanic era, which is why the exhibition is called Eternal Roots, Living Legacies. Because these practices are part of our daily lives and we do not always recognise them as legacies of the past,” Ruben Mamani—who oversees the museum’s archaeological and ethnological collections, and developed the exhibition’s new curatorial narrative—tells The Art Newspaper. The objects on display represent only a fraction of the Munarq collection of more than 30,000 artefacts from across the country. Founded in 1838 and now housed in the Palacio Tiwanaku, the institution, which operates under the Ministerio de Turismo Sostenible, Culturas, Folklore y Gastronomía, recently adopted the slogan “Bolivia’s first museum”. The exhibition’s “Immortality” section centres on Saphi, a mummified girl believed to have lived in the 15th century in the Pacajes region of what is now La Paz

. Returned to Bolivia by the University of Michigan in 2019, the mummified body is now presented alongside its grave goods, including small shoes, bracelets and pouches containing coca leaves, potatoes, chuño, corn, beans and other foods. Saphi’s hair remains carefully braided. Rather than presenting the mummified remains as an archaeological curiosity, the exhibition emphasises Saphi’s individuality, “with all the respect she deserves as a human being and as a girl”, Mamani says. “Saphi connects with a tradition that remains very present in Bolivia: Todos Santos (All Saints). We honour our ancestors and the dead by offering them food and drink,” Mamani says. “She was buried with many of the same elements that can still be found today on the family altars prepared for the celebration.” Mamani believes that Saphi may have been part of a Capacocha, an Inca ritual in which offerings were made at high-altitude sites. “She may have been offered to the deities to ask for a favour or protection,” he says. “Many people are moved when they see her. She has become an important part of La Paz’s collective imagination.” A gallery titled “Vessels of Celebration” centres on qeros, ceremonial vessels made in matching pairs that became important at Tiwanaku and under the Inca. Sharing a libation was more than an act of drinking: it was a way of recognising the other person and forging an alliance. A painting behind the qeros depicts the encounter between Atahualpa and the Spanish conquistadors at Cajamarca. Read original article