Best Museums in Ecuador

If you click on this picture you will see the Central Bank of Ecuador (run by the federal government, I believe) and attached to it, a museum.

It's the best museum in Cuenca with wonderful exhibits: art, history, anthropology, and folklore. The best museum we went to in Quito was also a Banco Central Museo, apparently funded by the Central Bank.

Hmmm, maybe there is a good idea here. Have the banks fund museums. In Oregon we need somebody to step up and fund some museums.

Oregon has the worst government funding for museums of any state I know of. It's embarrassing. Even Mississippi funds a number of history museums and other museums throughout the state.

One of the interesting exhibits at the Banco Central Museum was about shrunken heads. The Shuar people who live in the jungles of southeast Ecuador did this for centuries. The exhibit explained in some detail that this was mostly done to murderers. It was never done to women, children, or non-indigenous people. The practice is now outlawed by the Ecuadorian government, but the Shuar still shrink the heads of sloths.