Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art
Colonial customs palace holding thousands of pre-Columbian artifacts spanning ten thousand years across the Americas.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art in Santiago centers on a single ruined statue: Xipe Totec, the flayed spring god of the old Gulf Coast cultures, shattered when the 1985 earthquake toppled it from its stand. You'll hear how restorer Luis Solar and two colleagues chose to rebuild the piece themselves rather than ship it abroad, testing shard against shard by hand for years. Along the way, listen for what an earlier restorer had quietly done to one of the figure's missing limbs.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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