Bucaramanga Cultural Center

The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Bucaramanga, Santander is a place where the community of Santander can find art and culture from the city and other parts of the country and the world thanks to itinerant exhibitions and the events and workshops held in its various spaces. The entire catalogue of the Banco de la República’s Library Network in Colombia can be accessed from its facilities. Its exhibition area displays works from the bank's permanent collection along with temporary exhibitions. In addition, the conference room is a space open to the community where workshops are held and academic and reading activities for different audiences and on different topics are organized.

History

The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Bucaramanga opened its doors in September 1985, which gave way to the bank's cultural work in the region. Despite infrastructural limitations, in that year the bank’s cultural department in Bucaramanga managed to lay the foundations for inter-institutional work of great importance to the growth of the local cultural scene.

Cultural activities carried out in 1986 reflected clear policies, especially as it came to inter-institutional work and the use of local resources to counteract space limitations. This policy drove activities that promoted local creation, such as collective exhibitions that contributed to the strengthening of the culture of Santander.

During the early years, they promoted several programs around the Regional Archives Plan and the historical recovery of the newspaper library of the Santander Academy of History, as well as the creation of the Santander Bibliography Catalogue with the corrections and additions of the catalogues from the Chamber of Commerce, the Luis Angel Arango Library, and UIS, in addition to the implementation of programs to encourage reading. These programs continued to promote further activities that were consolidated over the years and are still continuously developing.

The year 1994 saw a high rate of participation, which boosted the programs and events that had been carried out thus far. In 2000, a management diagnosis indicated that, since its beginnings, cultural activities at the Bucaramanga Cultural Center reflected a continuous effort of inter-institutional coordination work with local cultural institutions, collaborating to preserve and share regional and national cultural heritage. This effort continues to be demonstrated year after year thanks to the management and continuous programming offered by the Cultural Center.