Indigenous Art Collection

Created in the late 1980s, the Indigenous Art Collection (IA) of Colección C&FE features more than 2,000 pieces of basketry, textiles, benches, ritual objects, and pottery from various Venezuelan indigenous groups: Warao, Ye’kwana, Yanomami, Panare, among others. The collection is based on aesthetic rather than ethnographic criteria, and it reflects the evolution of indigenous art produced in Venezuela throughout the last decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st. It has been substantially enriched by incorporating some historically significant collections, such as those of Yakera, Nereus Bell, and José García, as well as by acquisitions from major contemporary institutions, such as Fundación Acoana.

It should be noted that the Indigenous Art Collection is substantially complemented, both in material and documentary terms, by the archives of David Guss, Barbara Brändli, and Thea Segall, which are also part of Colección C&FE.