Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the National School of Fine Arts (1886) was founded, a series of debates was waged among Colombia’s lettered élites, questioning the aesthetic qualities of what were known at the time as “indigenous antiquities,” as well as the capacities for aesthetic perception among indigenous peoples. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the way in which the booming racial debates around the second half of the nineteenth century permeated discussions about art. Thus, it invites the reader to suspend the category of “pre-Columbian art” in order to explore how it gained in density as a result of the discussions that we will examine.