[2] In the early 1960s she co-founded and directed the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá, which was later moved to the campus of the National University of Colombia.

Traba continued to lecture at various universities while preparing a catalog and a book based on the collection of the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States.

In 1958, she published El museo vacío, a book concerning modern art in which she adopted aesthetic notions by Benedetto Croce and Wilhelm Worringer.

She also supported with her writings the work of numerous Colombian artists such as Alejandro Obregón, Fernando Botero, Leopoldo Richter (1896-1984), Guillermo Wiedemann [es], Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Samuel Montealegre [it], Edgar Negret, Feliza Bursztyn and Juan Antonio Roda [es].

Amongst her other novels are Conversación al sur (1981) (English version: Mothers and Shadows, translated by Jo Labanyi) which details the struggles of two women during the Dirty War in Argentina.