Founded in 1823, the National Museum of Colombia in Bogotá is the country's oldest museum, housed since 1948 in the former Central Penitentiary of Cundinamarca in the Candelaria historic center. Its collection of about 20,000 works spans archaeology, art, and ethnography; although not a dedicated Afro-descendant institution, it has consistently run Afro-Colombian-focused temporary exhibitions and houses materials on palenque communities and the Pacific lowlands — the principal centers of Colombia's Black population.