Manejar el legado colonial. Teresa Cuervo Borda y Sophy Pizano de Ortiz en la dirección del Museo de Arte Colonial de Bogotá, 1942-1953

In this article I study a series of documents from the Historical Archive of the Colonial Museum (AHMC) to analyze the administrations of Teresa Cuervo (1942-1946) and Sophy Pizano de Ortiz (1946-1953) at the Museum of Colonial Art of Bogotá. In light of these documents I examine how notions of heritage, history, and art were used by both directors in the configuration of the first national public institution dedicated to the conservation of Colombia's colonial past. Both women worked in the last years of what has been called the Liberal Republic (1930-1946) and its ideas about the formation of a national identity.