The Banco de la República reaches its 100 years of existence and to celebrate it will display a cultural, academic, pedagogical and informative agenda throughout 2023, as well as the launch of a new commemorative coin.
EL NUEVO SIGLO spoke with Sofía Restrepo, Head of Dissemination of the Cultural Sub-Management, about this cultural celebration that will take place this year in various cities in Colombia.
Restrepo highlighted the technical rigor with which the Banco de la República has conducted monetary policy for decades at critical moments in national history, as well as the step and contribution of the most prominent Colombian economists, the generation of knowledge and wealth management. culture of the nation.
THE NEW CENTURY: What are the activities to be carried out to celebrate these 100 years?
SOFIA RESTREPO: The Banco de la República, upon its 100th anniversary, wants to celebrate with Colombians with a series of activities around the arts, archaeology, music and literature. We will have a special celebration every month this year on the occasion of the centenary, a time in which it has played a fundamental role in the stability of the Colombian economy and in the cultural promotion in the country. On the cultural agenda we contemplate several concerts, a book, a documentary, the inauguration of the Zenú Gold Museum in Cartagena and the reopening of the Casa de la Moneda, among other activities.
ENS: The museum you mention is one of the most emblematic sites in Cartagena, what will the opening be like?
SR: It will reopen with a reassembly of its collection and a revised and completely revamped curatorship on February 18. It will be the reopening to the public of this museum in a beautiful colonial house that remains in the historic center of Cartagena, specifically in the Plaza de Bolívar of the walled city. The new permanent exhibition will exhibit millennial gold and tumbaga objects, ceramics and shells, made by the ancient populations that inhabited the Bay of Cartagena, the lower Magdalena River, the Caribbean savannahs and the San Jacinto Mountains.
ENS: The Bank of the Republic develops an important musical work and the concert season is coming. In how many cities will this program be present?
SR: Indeed, the national concert season begins in February at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogotá, but it immediately extends to 28 cities in the country where it has cultural venues. There will be two concerts in particular that will celebrate the centenary: the first will be on June 7 and the second on June 19. During July, the Simply Quartet from Austria will perform in Bogotá, with a universal repertoire for string quartet, and later three concerts will be held simultaneously with works commissioned by the Bank, which will take place in Bogotá, Quibdó and Leticia.
ENS: You mentioned the publication of a documentary. What is it about?
SR: In the month of March we will have the launch of the documentary “The Bank of the Republic, history of a hundred years”, which is divided into two parts: the cultural and the corporate or economic. We do not have dates yet, but when we do, we will announce them through institutional channels. In this documentary we are going to show everything that has happened in these 100 years of history, both at the corporate and cultural level.
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ENS: Armenia has one of the most beautiful museums in Colombia, a tribute to the ancient inhabitants of the region, the Quimbayas. How is the Gold Museum in this city?
SR: The cultural center was inaugurated in 2022 with other spaces from the archaeological collection of the Museo del Oro de Quimbaya, which has a regional documentation center and an art exhibition hall where you can see original works. Last June we had a very beautiful exhibition with national and international works of art called “Paradise and Gardens”, but now in 2023 the novelty of the museum is that there will be two rooms for the goldsmith exhibition and its opening will be in the month of June of this year.
ENS: When will the Casa de la Moneda reopen?
SR: In the month of July we will have the reopening of the Casa de la Moneda Museum. This is one of the emblematic cultural places of Banco la República: it is more than 40 years old and it has had the largest number of visits and more for this school period. We are visited by academics, historians, professors, among others. It has a completely renewed curatorial vision, we are trying to make it the same day that the Bank turns 100, which is July 23.
ENS: Tell me about the launch of the book.
SR: For that same month we have scheduled the launch of the book that will talk about the collection of banknotes and coins of Banco la República, which is precisely exhibited in the Casa de la Moneda Museum, but of course not all the pieces are exhibited, because there were not place to put all the pieces, which are more than 100,000.
ENS: What other activities are on the agenda for this year?
SR: Cultural activity continues on all fronts, in music, in the arts, in museums, in the library network. This year we will have several art exhibitions, which we will announce in due course. One of the most relevant is a photography exhibition that we are going to have later, we are still in the hiring process. Additionally, we are going to have several exhibitions in the branches.
ENS: How is the cultural network articulated throughout the country?
SR: We have several museums nationwide: the Botero Museum, the Miguel Urrutia Museum, the Casa de la Moneda, the Gold Museum, the Luis Ángel Luis Ángel Arango Library. In addition, in other cities we have the Gold museums in Santa Marta, in Cartagena, in Cali, in Nariño, in Leticia. We also have a network of 29 cultural centers, including Bogotá, where an exhibition is regularly exhibited every six months in each branch. In the year we can have up to 37 exhibitions open throughout the country simultaneously.