By Jasmine Agnes T. Cruz and Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman
Millennials’ stop? The National Museum
THE FRIDAY before Independence Day, at past 10 in the morning -- when shopping malls usually open and people already look forward to a Friday night out -- the National Museum was busy accepting guests who came in groups, alone, with a significant other, or with a friend. You could say the demographics were “cool” kids, the millennials, donned in their Nike Air Max, cropped tops, ripped jeans, taking selfies, lots of them, most especially with the star in the museum’s collection, Juan Luna’s Spoliarium.
It’s expected that there would also be an influx of visitors today, a holiday, until this weekend. While most people would spend a day off for an out-of-town getaway or a trip to the mall, a visit to the National Museum is seemingly the easiest, cheapest, and most appropriate itinerary for today’s celebration. It positions itself as relevant and important in (re-)discovering our identity. More than anything, the commemoration of our Independence Day should perhaps resonate most with the millennials, those born in the ’80s and ’90s, who grew up with the Kardashians, One Direction, and mobile applications, and barely knew and appreciate our own culture and history. The BusinessWorld writers and photographer for this story, who are all millennials, went to the museum to revisit our glorious past, ponder the present, and observe what it’s like to spend a day in the National Museum.
WARM RECEPTION
People are under the impression that a trip to the museum is often in the guise of a school excursion. But contrary to the popular belief that the cultural center established in 1901 along Taft Manila only comes alive during school field-trip season, the National Museum recently extended its free admission to the public until the end of June, thanks to the public’s warm reception. It offered free admission last month in celebration of National Heritage Month. “Due to a wonderful response from our museum audience last month and to celebrate both Independence Day and National Hero Jose Rizal’s birth anniversary [on June 19], the National Museum is happy to announce that it is able to make admission free to all its museum facilities throughout June,” went a post on the museum’s Facebook page.
But don’t think the National Museum was bursting at seams because of its one-month free admission alone, because according to our tour guide and protocol officer Jesusito Arella Jr., the museum’s usually jam-packed on weekends. Families and high school students are its regular visitors. Sometimes, foreign tourists like Koreans, Japanese, and Americans also visit the museum. The entrance fee costs P120 for senior citizens, P50 for students, P150 for adults, and it’s free admission for kids. On Sundays, it’s free for everyone. “The National Museum isn’t after the profit. If we would rely on profit for entrance fee alone, it wouldn’t suffice the monthly needs of the museum. Our main thrust is to promote and protect our culture and heritage,” Mr. Arella said. The government supports the National Museum, anyway, but the museum also has private donors and partners like the Museum Foundation of the Philippines.
Originally designed as a public library by American architect Ralph Harrington Doane, the National Museum, according to its web site, was initially occupied by the Senate and the House of the Representatives. The Legislative Building became a casualty in the onslaught of Manila’s liberation from the Japanese in 1945. It would be a key witness to subsequent events in the country’s political history -- including the First Quarter Storm of 1970, the declaration of martial law and the padlocking of Congress two years later, and the revived Senate’s historic vote to end the lease on the US bases in 1991. Five years later, the Senate moved out and the museum had this entire complex to itself. Renovations began in 2003.
Under its current director, Jeremy Barns, the museum has installed additional closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and has undergone other makeovers. According to Mr. Arella, the galleries were repainted and are now arranged chronologically. Gallery I, which showcases religious relics from the 17th to 19th centuries, is painted red to highlight and complement the brown statues and figurines. Gallery VIII, which highlights the grim events of the Pacific War, is painted apple green to stress the yellow tones of the paintings and sculptures. Each gallery has CCTV cameras and a guard watching over misbehaved kids who would sneak a feel of a painting or sculpture or take selfless with a camera flash. The National Museum also has a Chemistry and Conservation Laboratory, which maintains and preserves the collections.
Unknown to many, the National Museum has 15 branches around the country. Some of the branches have new or ongoing expansions and restorations. According to Ana Maria Theresa P. Labrador, National Museum assistant director who serves as chief curator for the branches, the local culture is important nationally. She said that unlike majority of the small, provincial museums, which usually have mere reproductions on display, the National Museum’s branches have original objects. Nelson Aquino, an architect from the National Museum who is also currently working on several branch museums, added that several of the branches’ developments are targeted to be completed this year. The simultaneous constructions were partly spurred by the country hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but Ms. Labrador also noted that in terms of developing non-Manila based cultural sites and promoting tourism in the provinces, they are playing catch up. “We should have done this a long time ago. We don’t want them to get left behind. The local community deserves much more from their National Museum,” she said.
NATIONAL MEMORY
A trip to the museum shouldn’t be a once in a blue moon affair or when the school curriculum mandates a visit among the students. The National Museum is a bastion and a bank of our national memory. In its two buildings in the main branch lie painting, sculptures, artifacts, and mementos of our glorious past from preserved botanical plants to sculptures to Jose Rizal’s and BenCab’s paintings.
A visit to the National Museum on Independence Day is the most apt #ThrowbackThursday trip down memory lane. According to our tour guide Mr. Arella, an average visit to a gallery takes 45 minutes. When we were surveying the galleries, professor and historian Xiao Chua came in the room with a small group. He said he conducts museum tours with friends and students once a month. Other culture advocates like Ivan Man Dy and John Silva also do tour groups in the museum. While anyone can always read the captions, it’s better to visit the museum with a tour guide to be informed accordingly. The security guards keeping watch in each gallery also know something about each collection.
According to Mr. Arella, there is a vault hidden within the walls of the museum which houses some of the oldest, most battered, most ruined, and most important artifacts of the Philippines, which couldn’t be displayed because they are precious and vulnerable. The National Museum is mandated to preserve our cultural mementos, showcasing them only comes second. What could they be? Book a trip to the National Museum and (re)discover the answer.
WARM RECEPTION
People are under the impression that a trip to the museum is often in the guise of a school excursion. But contrary to the popular belief that the cultural center established in 1901 along Taft Manila only comes alive during school field-trip season, the National Museum recently extended its free admission to the public until the end of June, thanks to the public’s warm reception. It offered free admission last month in celebration of National Heritage Month. “Due to a wonderful response from our museum audience last month and to celebrate both Independence Day and National Hero Jose Rizal’s birth anniversary [on June 19], the National Museum is happy to announce that it is able to make admission free to all its museum facilities throughout June,” went a post on the museum’s Facebook page.
But don’t think the National Museum was bursting at seams because of its one-month free admission alone, because according to our tour guide and protocol officer Jesusito Arella Jr., the museum’s usually jam-packed on weekends. Families and high school students are its regular visitors. Sometimes, foreign tourists like Koreans, Japanese, and Americans also visit the museum. The entrance fee costs P120 for senior citizens, P50 for students, P150 for adults, and it’s free admission for kids. On Sundays, it’s free for everyone. “The National Museum isn’t after the profit. If we would rely on profit for entrance fee alone, it wouldn’t suffice the monthly needs of the museum. Our main thrust is to promote and protect our culture and heritage,” Mr. Arella said. The government supports the National Museum, anyway, but the museum also has private donors and partners like the Museum Foundation of the Philippines.
Originally designed as a public library by American architect Ralph Harrington Doane, the National Museum, according to its web site, was initially occupied by the Senate and the House of the Representatives. The Legislative Building became a casualty in the onslaught of Manila’s liberation from the Japanese in 1945. It would be a key witness to subsequent events in the country’s political history -- including the First Quarter Storm of 1970, the declaration of martial law and the padlocking of Congress two years later, and the revived Senate’s historic vote to end the lease on the US bases in 1991. Five years later, the Senate moved out and the museum had this entire complex to itself. Renovations began in 2003.
Under its current director, Jeremy Barns, the museum has installed additional closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and has undergone other makeovers. According to Mr. Arella, the galleries were repainted and are now arranged chronologically. Gallery I, which showcases religious relics from the 17th to 19th centuries, is painted red to highlight and complement the brown statues and figurines. Gallery VIII, which highlights the grim events of the Pacific War, is painted apple green to stress the yellow tones of the paintings and sculptures. Each gallery has CCTV cameras and a guard watching over misbehaved kids who would sneak a feel of a painting or sculpture or take selfless with a camera flash. The National Museum also has a Chemistry and Conservation Laboratory, which maintains and preserves the collections.
Unknown to many, the National Museum has 15 branches around the country. Some of the branches have new or ongoing expansions and restorations. According to Ana Maria Theresa P. Labrador, National Museum assistant director who serves as chief curator for the branches, the local culture is important nationally. She said that unlike majority of the small, provincial museums, which usually have mere reproductions on display, the National Museum’s branches have original objects. Nelson Aquino, an architect from the National Museum who is also currently working on several branch museums, added that several of the branches’ developments are targeted to be completed this year. The simultaneous constructions were partly spurred by the country hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but Ms. Labrador also noted that in terms of developing non-Manila based cultural sites and promoting tourism in the provinces, they are playing catch up. “We should have done this a long time ago. We don’t want them to get left behind. The local community deserves much more from their National Museum,” she said.
NATIONAL MEMORY
A trip to the museum shouldn’t be a once in a blue moon affair or when the school curriculum mandates a visit among the students. The National Museum is a bastion and a bank of our national memory. In its two buildings in the main branch lie painting, sculptures, artifacts, and mementos of our glorious past from preserved botanical plants to sculptures to Jose Rizal’s and BenCab’s paintings.
A visit to the National Museum on Independence Day is the most apt #ThrowbackThursday trip down memory lane. According to our tour guide Mr. Arella, an average visit to a gallery takes 45 minutes. When we were surveying the galleries, professor and historian Xiao Chua came in the room with a small group. He said he conducts museum tours with friends and students once a month. Other culture advocates like Ivan Man Dy and John Silva also do tour groups in the museum. While anyone can always read the captions, it’s better to visit the museum with a tour guide to be informed accordingly. The security guards keeping watch in each gallery also know something about each collection.
According to Mr. Arella, there is a vault hidden within the walls of the museum which houses some of the oldest, most battered, most ruined, and most important artifacts of the Philippines, which couldn’t be displayed because they are precious and vulnerable. The National Museum is mandated to preserve our cultural mementos, showcasing them only comes second. What could they be? Book a trip to the National Museum and (re)discover the answer.
Museums Beyond Manila
DID YOU KNOW that the National Museum mother building in Ermita, Manila, has 15 children across the archipelago? From the north, in Batanes, to the south, in Zamboanga, the people’s museum makes its presence felt across regions.
PADRE BURGOS’s ancestral home
VIGAN ATTRACTION
Recently declared as one of the New Seven Wonder Cities of the World, Vigan proves there’s more to it than its cobbled stones and longganisa. A trip to Vigan wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the National Museum. The Vigan branch was originally just the Padre Burgos House, the ancestral house of Jose Burgos (one of the Gomburza martyrs) that was turned into a museum showcasing the lifestyle during Padre Burgos’s time.
The museum wanted to expand its site, hoping to get the nearby library, but after talks with the Vice-Governor of Ilocos, the museum was offered Vigan’s carcel. “We were surprised,” said National Museum assistant director and branch curator Ana Maria Theresa P. Labrador. The carcel was still being used by prisoners until 2013 when they were transferred to a new building that could accommodate their number. “But we were also up for the challenge,” she said.
The carcel turned out to be historically significant as it was the birthplace of postwar Philippine president Elpidio Quirino as his father was a jail warden. It was also beside the Burgos House so this gave the museum leeway to create its Ilocos Sur Regional Complex, which will encompass the carcel, the Burgos house, the old garage which will be turned into shops, and the women’s correctional, which will be turned into a station for the staff.
The carcel site had its inaugural exhibit in January, which showcased the return (it was in the Manila branch for restoration) of the 14 paintings by Esteban Villanueva that portrayed the historic Basi Revolt of 1807, when the Ilocanos resisted the Spanish administration’s restrictions on the production of sugarcane wine or basi.
ZAMBOANGA’S NATIONAL
CULTURAL TREASURE
The Fort Pilar Museum in Zamboanga, a complex with four buildings, is a National Cultural Treasure, the highest classification of a cultural property that recognizes the object’s historical, cultural, artistic and/or scientific value.
The museum opened a new exhibit last year, which featured the Dioramas of the Griffin shipwreck or the boat of the British East India Company. This ship wanted to trade with the datu of Sulu but a storm sunk the ship. The museum also has a lepa or boat by the Bajao tribe. The boat is suspended above so people can go around it and marvel at its entire structure.
The development in Zamboanga was controversial. Ms. Labrador admits that there was tension between the locals and the museum when it restored a part of the Zamboanga complex. One of the four buildings was a ruin that locals grew to love because they used it for wedding photo shoots. So when the museum restored it, the locals didn’t like it.
For Ms. Labrador, she was concerned with the objects that were to be exhibited inside the structure. She said that the site was near the sea, and since the exposed bricks that had to be removed could not make the structure air tight, salt air could seep in and degrade the ethnographic art.
Ms. Labrador said director Jeremy Barns supported the decision. It turns out that the structure became a ruin not because of war or disaster but because of neglect. “We don’t want to enshrine our neglect,” said Ms. Labrador.
FOOTHOLD IN BATANES
Batanes is known for its rolling hills, but did you know that there is also a National Museum being built there? Targeted to open next month, the museum’s site used to be a long-range navigation station that was abandoned in the ’60s. Aside from having exhibits that will encourage visitors to further explore the rest of Batanes, the site will revive the film screenings that were held at the station back in the day. A nearby swimming pool will also be open to the public.
BUTUAN’S BOATS
If you thought that museums are only indoors, think again. Scheduled to open next year is the National Museum’s first-ever archaeological park at Butuan.
The site is currently a swamp-like area with balangay (traditional Butuan boats) still predominantly buried. Archeologists believe there are 12 more boats to be unearthed, and one of them might be a mother ship because the pegs are as large as sardine cans, said Ms. Labrador.
There are many theories as to why the boats were found there, said Ms. Labrador. One is climate change in the 12th century! -- redirecting the course of the Agusan River, toward where inter-island trade vessels were parked, turning this area into a marsh with buried boats.
Because the site will be open air, it will be a challenge to preserve the boats, and the museum also needs to consider that the area gets flooded from time to time, said Ms. Labrador. Yet even with these challenges, the museum is looking forward to this project. Not only will this be their first archeological park, but it is also already on the tentative United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage List.
Recently declared as one of the New Seven Wonder Cities of the World, Vigan proves there’s more to it than its cobbled stones and longganisa. A trip to Vigan wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the National Museum. The Vigan branch was originally just the Padre Burgos House, the ancestral house of Jose Burgos (one of the Gomburza martyrs) that was turned into a museum showcasing the lifestyle during Padre Burgos’s time.
The museum wanted to expand its site, hoping to get the nearby library, but after talks with the Vice-Governor of Ilocos, the museum was offered Vigan’s carcel. “We were surprised,” said National Museum assistant director and branch curator Ana Maria Theresa P. Labrador. The carcel was still being used by prisoners until 2013 when they were transferred to a new building that could accommodate their number. “But we were also up for the challenge,” she said.
The carcel turned out to be historically significant as it was the birthplace of postwar Philippine president Elpidio Quirino as his father was a jail warden. It was also beside the Burgos House so this gave the museum leeway to create its Ilocos Sur Regional Complex, which will encompass the carcel, the Burgos house, the old garage which will be turned into shops, and the women’s correctional, which will be turned into a station for the staff.
The carcel site had its inaugural exhibit in January, which showcased the return (it was in the Manila branch for restoration) of the 14 paintings by Esteban Villanueva that portrayed the historic Basi Revolt of 1807, when the Ilocanos resisted the Spanish administration’s restrictions on the production of sugarcane wine or basi.
ZAMBOANGA’S NATIONAL
CULTURAL TREASURE
The Fort Pilar Museum in Zamboanga, a complex with four buildings, is a National Cultural Treasure, the highest classification of a cultural property that recognizes the object’s historical, cultural, artistic and/or scientific value.
The museum opened a new exhibit last year, which featured the Dioramas of the Griffin shipwreck or the boat of the British East India Company. This ship wanted to trade with the datu of Sulu but a storm sunk the ship. The museum also has a lepa or boat by the Bajao tribe. The boat is suspended above so people can go around it and marvel at its entire structure.
The development in Zamboanga was controversial. Ms. Labrador admits that there was tension between the locals and the museum when it restored a part of the Zamboanga complex. One of the four buildings was a ruin that locals grew to love because they used it for wedding photo shoots. So when the museum restored it, the locals didn’t like it.
For Ms. Labrador, she was concerned with the objects that were to be exhibited inside the structure. She said that the site was near the sea, and since the exposed bricks that had to be removed could not make the structure air tight, salt air could seep in and degrade the ethnographic art.
Ms. Labrador said director Jeremy Barns supported the decision. It turns out that the structure became a ruin not because of war or disaster but because of neglect. “We don’t want to enshrine our neglect,” said Ms. Labrador.
FOOTHOLD IN BATANES
Batanes is known for its rolling hills, but did you know that there is also a National Museum being built there? Targeted to open next month, the museum’s site used to be a long-range navigation station that was abandoned in the ’60s. Aside from having exhibits that will encourage visitors to further explore the rest of Batanes, the site will revive the film screenings that were held at the station back in the day. A nearby swimming pool will also be open to the public.
BUTUAN’S BOATS
If you thought that museums are only indoors, think again. Scheduled to open next year is the National Museum’s first-ever archaeological park at Butuan.
The site is currently a swamp-like area with balangay (traditional Butuan boats) still predominantly buried. Archeologists believe there are 12 more boats to be unearthed, and one of them might be a mother ship because the pegs are as large as sardine cans, said Ms. Labrador.
There are many theories as to why the boats were found there, said Ms. Labrador. One is climate change in the 12th century! -- redirecting the course of the Agusan River, toward where inter-island trade vessels were parked, turning this area into a marsh with buried boats.
Because the site will be open air, it will be a challenge to preserve the boats, and the museum also needs to consider that the area gets flooded from time to time, said Ms. Labrador. Yet even with these challenges, the museum is looking forward to this project. Not only will this be their first archeological park, but it is also already on the tentative United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage List.
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