Cover for The Portable Universe/El Universo en tus Manos:             Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
The Portable Universe/El Universo en tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia
A landmark book reframing ancient Colombian art—including goldwork, ceramics, textiles and more—as vehicles of cultural knowledge across space and time.
Edited with text by Julia Burtenshaw, Héctor García Botero, Diana Magaloni, María Alicia Uribe Villegas. Introduction by Wade Davis. Text by Luis Cayón, Francisco Chimontero Nuibita Dingula, Juan Fernando Cobo Betancourt, Tom Cummins, Ana María Falchetti, Santiago Giraldo, Ariel James, Carlos David Londoño Sulkin, Carlos E. López, Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez, Carlo Emilio Piazzini Suárez
Designed by Lorraine Wild and Xiaoqing Wang, Green Dragon Office

2023 Winner, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association

2023 Finalist, Prix Pierre Moos Award

Published 2022 | ISBN: 9781636810225

Spanning all major pre-Columbian cultures of Colombia, and featuring some of the most remarkable artworks ever made in this region—from intricately cast gold pendants and ceramic effigies to modern Indigenous stools, barkcloths and featherworks—The Portable Universe/El Universo en tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia radically recasts how we approach ancient Colombian art.

Featuring an innovative cover design with tip-on images, the book is arranged so as to envelop the works with life and meaning, and guide readers to different ways of understanding the world and our place in it. It includes insightful contributions by Indigenous Colombians, historians, ethnographers, archaeologists and art historians.

The Portable Universe/El Universo en tus Manos recaptures some of the knowledge of Indigenous American cultures and presents new historical findings, drawing heavily on contemporary Indigenous understandings to evoke a worldview in which these ancient pieces make sense and have power today.

Also published in French.