Colombia's National Museum Removes 30 Works on President's Order

Approximately 30 artworks addressing LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, and the 2016 FARC peace accord disappeared from display at the Museo Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá last week on President Abelardo De La Espriella's direct order.

The directive, issued to Culture Minister Paola Holguín, prompted hundreds to protest at the museum over the weekend. Police in riot gear responded with water cannons and stun grenades on October 18, 2026.

Holguín defended the removals on X, writing that the museum may not serve as "an instrument of political indoctrination" or "a hub for spreading biased versions of our history."

De La Espriella framed the order more pointedly. He instructed Holguín to remove "all those odes to terrorism featuring Pizarro and the other terrorists" from public places. The reference was to Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, a former guerrilla commander and one of three Colombian presidential candidates assassinated in 1990.

What did the museums lose?

The most symbolically weighted object was a pen made from a bullet, crafted under then-President Juan Manuel Santos and used to sign the 2016 agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It bore the inscription: "Bullets wrote our past, education will write our future."

Other removed objects included:

• A Pride Flag belonging to activist Elizabeth Castillo
• A Humberto Rincón Perfetti photograph from an LGBTQ+ rights march
• A pamphlet on women's reproductive rights
• Ephemera referencing the 1990 assassinations of Pizarro Leongómez and Patriotic Union leader Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa
• Works by late artists Antonio Caro, known for his subversive treatment of the Coca-Cola logo, and Luis Caballero, celebrated for paintings of the male nude

Most of the withdrawn pieces hung in the "Making Society" gallery, inaugurated in 2019 to examine "processes of coexistence, resistance, and revindication." A separate section held socially engaged printmaking and photography from the 1950s and 1960s.

How did the cultural sector respond?

Directors of six modern art museums across Colombia signed a joint declaration expressing "deep concern." The signatories led institutions in Medellín, Bogotá, Cartagena, Barranquilla, and El Tolima, plus the Museo El Rayo.

"Museums have the responsibility of allowing us to know the complexity of our history, including that which makes us uncomfortable, confronts us, or is difficult for us to acknowledge," the statement read.

Beatriz López, co-founder and artistic director of Instituto de Visión gallery in Bogotá and New York, called for the works to be reinstated. "May the objects return to a place where they can recover their voice, and may the museum once again be a space where history is not dictated but researched, shared, and kept open to questioning," López wrote.

Medellín-based artist Pablo A. Medina predicted a longer cultural reckoning. "This goes beyond a shameless act of censorship. It is also an attempt to erase a history and culture that are an undeniable part of this country. But what they do not realize is that what you try to erase only becomes stronger," Medina said.

What does this change for Colombian arts?

De La Espriella was sworn in this August after defeating leftist senator Iván Cepeda by the narrowest margin in Colombian recent history. His "antiwoke" campaign rhetoric drew comparisons to El Salvador's Nayib Bukele and Argentina's Javier Milei.

The directive follows a September 2026 Culture Ministry suspension of a long-running federal stimulus program that supported artists and creative workers. Both moves echo President Donald Trump's Smithsonian crackdown over exhibits addressing slavery and civil rights.

Bogotá-based independent curator Jaime Cerón, who curated the city's 2025 biennial, framed the removals as continuity rather than rupture. "The changes the Colombian government has made overall represent a setback for the cultural rights of communities that, throughout history, have been rendered invisible, marginalized, or censored," Cerón said.

He pointed to the 2025 whitewashing of "Las cuchas tienen razón," a Medellín mural honoring mothers searching for their disappeared children during paramilitary violence. Artists quickly repainted the work, and its phrase spread across the country.

"Acts of censorship have become the most effective way to make what one wants to erase omnipresent and ultra-visible," Cerón said.

The removals leave the Museo Nacional visibly thinner in its permanent collection and its leadership on one side of a declaration it has yet to address. How the institution responds will set the terms for the next phase of Colombia's culture war.