Introduction: Two Museums

Abstract

On Calle La Niña in the heart of La Mariscal, the upscale tourist-geared district in the north of Quito, Ecuador’s capital, a recent addition materialized, around the same time that the Holiday Inn and the Marriott highrises became new fixtures of the Mariscal skyline. That addition is Museo Etnográfico de Artesania de Ecuador, which features artwork, crafts, and general ethnographic information about the indigenous peoples of Ecuador. The museum is located in the same building as an upscale cafe with a veranda, where the patrons are a mixture of international tourists and upscale local businesspeople, enjoying elaborate coffee selections and free wifi. As a space it is both geographically and socially removed from the muddy banks of Rio Napo, along which many of the peoples depicted within it make their livelihoods. It is a multistory affair, where thematic diaramas are equipped with motion-sensitive lights, illuminating the displays as the visitors drift through them. Forest-dwelling Indians are on a separate floor from the highland indigenous groups; textiles from Otavalo are separate from wooden hunting implements from the low-lands, yet all the forest-dwelling groups are next to each other. In the taxonomy of this museum, the lowland Kichwa¹ have more in common with fellow forest-dwellers Waorani and Shuar than with their highland counterparts.