Museum of Gold, Ouro Preto, Brazil
Graduate | Undergraduate
Studio | Non-Studio
1st | 2nd | 3rd Year, 1st | 2nd Semester (Fall 2023)
Instructor: Mark Foster Gage
Ouro Preto has a history marked by exploitation and the extraction of vast wealth. During its peak in the 18th century, the region produced an estimated 800 tonnes of gold, which constituted about 30% of the world's supply at the time, yet the town never reaped the riches. In fact, virtually all of the gold extracted from Ouro Preto was stolen by colonial powers, taken back to Portugal and Britain to adorn their palaces.
My Museum of Gold in Ouro Preto, set amid historic gold mines, contrasts sharply with its lavish counterpart in Bogota, Colombia, featuring a rather unassuming façade: a white ceramic scrim, 3 inches thick, in-line with the vernacular off-white stucco houses that line the street.
As you enter the open courtyard, the scrim begins to dissolve, leaving a Baroque pattern. The faces white, and the cut sections glazed in blue, a contemporary take on the Portuguese tile, or Azulejo. As the ceramic scrim begins to turn the corner, the blue transitions to black until the scrim reaches the rock wall forming the base of the adjacent dwelling.
At this point, the Baroque patterns are then carved from the rock, and the ceramic becomes an inlay, becoming less and less as the path becomes darker and darker, until you are completely underground. The Oscar Niemeyer-inspired museum entrance "ramp" is actually a 1:20 sloped floor, bringing you a storey underground without you realizing.
Once inside, the path is illuminated with a dim glowing linear light lining the now ceramic-inlayed, stone-carved façade on the left, with an excavated rough-cut stone wall on the right.
The journey through this main corridor is a timeline chronicling the history of gold in Ouro Preto, beginning in 1698 with the discovery of gold under a layer of iron oxide by the bandeirantes. The permanent collection of tools, images, maps and photographs of the time are displayed in carved pockets in the rough rock, with two galleries appended to host temporary exhibitions.
As the path narrows and the light fades, the museum's focal point emerges: a delicate cast-iron pedestal cradling mere ounces of polished gold, the only yield from the excavation of the entire museum.
With up to 100 tonnes of rock required to produce a single ounce of gold, this display poignantly puts into perspective the hundreds upon hundreds of miles of mines that were dug to extract the 28 million ounces over the city's history, a harrowing history wrought with slavery, where often children, forced into labor, toiled in unimaginable conditions.
As you move forward, the walls narrow, and the ceiling rises, and the light fades away as the ceramic scrim forming the wall of the outdoor plaza above gets further and further away, transitioning to stone lower down the wall, until finally you are in complete darkness, with mere inches between you and the walls on either side, your next guide being the natural light reflecting off the rock coming from the shaft ahead.
Then you look up, and in the blinding light you see the silhouette of the cross atop the church above, where a share of the rest of the gold in Ouro Preto adorns the walls.
Then you look up, and in the blinding light you see the silhouette of the cross atop the church above, where a share of the rest of the gold in Ouro Preto adorns the walls.
