Wearing suits, jackets, and overalls: Externadistas, 131 years of participation
The Externado de Colombia University Library welcomes students with a new exhibit aimed at promoting Externadista pride.
The Externado de Colombia University Library, the History Project, and the Museology Area of the Cultural Heritage Studies Faculty, present: “Wearing suits, jackets, and overalls: Externadistas, 131 years of participation,” the new exhibition is open to the public until August 25, 2017.
The exposition includes over 80 pieces, including photographs, documents, objects, and newspaper clippings.
The exhibition, full of color and images, takes a journey through the country’s history, through anecdotes of students who have passed through the Externado and the memories of their participation in different critical moments in Colombia.
The exhibit is divided into seven sections, with three annex locations. In the showcase at the Library second floor, visitors will find the section titled “First Externado,“ displaying photographs and documents from the first generations, in the late 19th century, and a series of objects and files belonging to outstanding University students.
The six remaining sections are located in the Exhibition Hall: “The beginning of the student movement; ““The right to act;” “Student organization;” “Facing the front;” “Towards a new course;” and “New air, new generation.” An immersion in the twentieth-century student body, with historical backdrops such as the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla, the emergence of the student movement, and the 1991 constituent process.
At annex locations, visitors will find a showcases dedicated to exalting the academic production, through short epigraphs, deep humanist reflections, and moving tributes to professors, tutors, and as Catalina Mojica Anaya says in her thesis titled “Solapamientos creativos: investigación del tiempo sensitivo en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges”: to solitude, which brings many good things.” Also, the Institute for Constitutional Studies has on display a series of documents orbiting around the figure of its illustrious founder, Carlos Restrepo Piedrahita.
To end the tour, at the Exhibit Hall, located on the first floor of the Library, visitors will be able to feed their history experience through questions about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This space is an invitation to reflect and play with creativity.
“Wearing suits, jackets and overalls: Externadistas, 131 years of participation,” is a reality thanks to the research and curation of Juan Camilo Rodríguez, Juanita Salamanca Uribe, and Natalia León Soler; the museography work by William Gamboa and Carlos Gonzáles; the coordination by Patricia Vélez de Monchaux and Carol Contreras Suárez. Also, the support of the Historical Archives and the University Communications Area; the Bogotá Archives; the Nation’s General Archives; the Colombia National Library; the Carlos Restrepo Piedrahita Institute for Constitutional Studies, and the Museum of Bogotá.