Four Museums in a Single Day in Santiago

This was not one of the four museums I visited in a single day in Santiago. But it is a museum. An art museum. Of sorts.

The plan for the day was a full-day winery tour, visiting four wineries in a single day of drunken debauchery (from all the wine tasting). But the tour got cancelled because there were not enough people signed up. (This is not tourist season in Santiago.) (There is a tourist season in southern hemisphere summer and this is not then.)

So a full free day presented itself the night before. How to replace four wineries? With four museums. 

So off to the Santiago Metro to the Quinta Normal metro stop to the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Above are some interesting-looking buildings directly across the street from the Museum which, despite being interesting-looking even under the graffiti, does not even get named on google maps.

This is the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, in all its modernist glory.

It is a museum dedicated to the victims of the Pinochet military dictatorship that overthrow Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.

Allegedly, the museum is billed as giving a balanced treatment of that era. Very few of the displays were in English, so I did not read if the "balanced treatment" included making mention of the fact that Allende was working to install a communist dictatorship a la Castro's Cuba or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Pinochet dictatorship most certainly engaged in a senseless slaughter of those perceived to be enemies of the state, but had Allende taken Chile in a communist dictatorship, would the death toll have been higher? History does not run control-group experiments so that is a question that will never be answered. 

It could have been more balanced. It could have been more ideological. But the next museum is most definitely ideology-free.

It is deeper into Parque Quinta Normal, the city park from which the metro stop was named.

El Museo Ferroviario de Santiago. The Railway Museum of Santiago.

I saw that there was a railway museum in the park. I was expecting a building. With route maps. And photographs of the founders of Chilean railroads.

This was not that.

This was an open air museum.

Which was perfect on a sunny fall day. Even if the temperatures were a bit on the "crisp" side.

And it was all trains.

And not even really "trains." It was all locomotives.

And a few other cars thrown in just because.

The admission charge, with my senior discount, was 1500 Chilean pesos. About a buck fifty. This was the only museum of the day that had an entry fee. And it was so worth it.

There were some details throughout the museum about the manufacture of the various locomotives that you can read about if you were so inclined.

But mostly this was just for people who wanted to look at the big old locomotives.

Locomotives of various sizes and shapes.

And colors.

There was even a passenger train that you could (briefly) board and walk through one of the cars.

Which I did.

This was the locomotive paired with those passenger cars.

There even was a locomotive you could board to take a closer look.

You could ring the bell, but beware:

No more than three rings allowed!

Again, great trains in a beautiful park:

Definitely worth visiting when in Santiago.

Even if after it is all done ...

You are dog-tired.

The next museum, still in the Parque Quinda Normal, was the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural.

The Museum of Natural History.

It too was free. So of course I went in.

There was an interesting map about the maximum glaciation in South America during the last ice age.

We have all seen maps of the maximum glaciation in the northern hemisphere during the last ice age, but we almost never see -- at least in our hemisphere -- maps of the glaciation in the southern hemisphere. Given that there is a whole lot less land to have been covered in glaciers in the southern hemisphere, it was interesting to see the full reach of the glaciers. Interestingly, Argentine Patagonia was barely touched by the glaciers.

And, of course, what would a natural history museum be without a giant dinosaur skeleton?

Natural history museums are generally children's museums. I was hoping for a display about the Early Man discoveries in Monteverde, near Puerto Montt, Chile, well to the south of Santiago. There was nothing that I could tell. Could be because the discovery is so new. Could be because the discovery has not yielded any interesting artifacts to place in a museum.

I had to get back on the Metro to get to the fourth and final of the day's museums.

El Museo Histórico y Militar de Chile. The Chilean Military Museum. The museum is in a former military school near the Parque Bernando O'Higgins.

You just know that there was a lot of military-style parading done in this giant plaza within the military school complex. And overseeing all that parading? 

General Manual Baquedano Gonzalez. On a horse. He was a hero in the "War of the Pacific," the war in which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia, got new territory (and mines) in what is now the Chilean North, which forever cut off Bolivia from the sea. 

By the way, Parque Bernardo O'Higgins is best known to Chileans as the park that contains Santiago's largest amusement park: Fantasilandia.

The museum was not entirely in Spanish. There were a number of displays that also were in English. Although the museum covered the per-hispanic period, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War, the museum's primary focus was on the war of independence from Spain (and the Peruvian viceroyalty).

That, of course, was led by Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín. Here they are depicted crossing the Andes,

Which must have been brutal. O'Higgins is more beloved in Chile. San Martín is much more beloved in Peru. Both were important.

And here is a bust of General O'Higgins from the museum:

Moving on to the War of the Pacific, we have here a favorite event in Chilean military history.

Iquique. And the sinking of Peruvian ship.

In the United States, we have a vague sense that Chile fought a war against its neighbors and, as a result, it got territory to the north and Bolivia got cut off from the ocean. But traveling in Chile, and in Peru before it, it seems that this war was significantly a naval war. When I thought about the war, I thought it was a land war and, more specifically, a land grab war. But in Chile and Peru, the war is thought of as a naval war.

The second floor of the museum contains the exhibits on World War I and II and the Cold War.

And an important display on the Chilean conquest of a slice of the Antarctic pie.

To Chileans, Antarctic exploration was a military act. Hence, a display in the national military museum.

It is time to descend the staircase and exit a day of museum hopping. And it is getting awfully close to rush hour, so the metro should be packed. Tomorrow I leave Santiago just when I finally figured out how to use the Metro.

The Museo Nacional de Belles Artes is "Temporarily" Closed. Again.

The butt's eye view of a Botero horse outside the Museum of Contemporary Art.

One of the museums I so wanted to visit on my first trip to Santiago was the Museo Nacional de Belles Artes. Unfortunately, it was closed due a museum workers' strike. Yes, it was a strike of just the workers at Chile's public museums. (I don't think it was limited to the public museums of Santiago although I would guess that Santiago has a lot of the country's public museums.) This time the museum was closed again. "Temporarily." Which I think means: we heard Spretnak was coming to town.

I believe this is the Plaza Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna. So let's put a flower in our hair. We're going to San Francisco.

The Iglesia de San Francisco, to be precise.

I believe that there is a Church of St. Francis in just about every city across the globe with any sort of Catholic population. And in the Spanish-speaking world, a Church of St, Francis is an Iglesia de San Francisco.

First, let's say "hello" to a new old friend:

San Expedito. The patron saint of urgent causes. Literally. And the patron saint to whom we pray for intercession for success in lawsuits. San Expedito was a Roman centurion in Armenia (then a much larger swath of land going from present day Armenia, through the eastern third of Turkey, into the Levant of northern Lebanon and Syria). He converted to Christianity and was promptly martyred. killed by Roman officials who did not much care for the upstart religion.

This is the altar of the Iglesia de San Francisco:

I knew I was not going to be able to go into the Museo Nacional de Belles Artes as it, once again, was "temporarily" closed. But I thought I could at least snap a few photos of its beautiful exterior.

First, was the MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo side of the museum.

It does have a Botero horse outside.

Botero is the famous Colombian artist renowned for depicting the subjects of his sculptures, paintings and drawings as being extremely rotund. Botero himself, ironically, was of normal weight.

The Museum of Contemporary Art was open, but I did not go in due to my prejudice against "contemporary" art. This is not the time for a rant on my belief that "modern" art, or its evil twin, "post-modern" art, is nothing but ugly handicrafts done by talent-free brats who have labelled themselves "artist." I'll save that rant for a later time.

Across from the closed entrance -- which is an oxymoron I believe -- of the Museo Nacional de Belles Artes was this sculpture in Parque Forestal: Monumento a la Gloria.

And, as seen from the Monumento a la Gloria, here is the unopened Museo Nacional de Belles Artes:

Here it is again. By itself.

And in the Parque Forestal:

This is the Castillo Forestal. It's not a Castle. It's a restaurant. Given its location, in the beautiful Parque Forestal across from the National Museum of Fine Arts, I would guess it's at least a little upscale.

We will end the day's tour with this sculpture outside the shuttered (to me) Museo Nacional de Belles Artes:

It reads, on the base, "Unidos En La Gloria Y En La Muerte." United in Glory and in Death. Hear that, Museo Nacional de Belles Artes. You've been closed twice now for me. You're dead to me. No glory. Just death.