The Denver Art Museum's pre-Columbian collection represents nearly every major culture in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America.

The Jan and Frederick Mayer Galleries of Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art were installed in 1993. Included are paintings, sculpture, furniture, silver, and decorative arts from the Spanish Colonial period, as well as pre-Columbian masterworks in ceramic, stone, gold, jade, and textiles.

One component of the installation is an innovative study-storage gallery, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Study Gallery of Pre-Columbian Art.

The large glass-shelved display cases allow DAM to place nearly all of its pre-Columbian collection on permanent display for audiences to share and learn about the cultures of the Americas. The presentation permits visitors to view the full spectrum of pre-Columbian forms and media, and compare multiple examples of items such as figurines, cache vessels, stone sculptures, and jade ornaments.