A day at the museum

Every couple of months, as an antidote to boredom, I drag friends on a circuit of Manila art museums. For modern art, we visit the Ayala Museum and the Ateneo Art Gallery. For contemporary art, we make the trip to Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo. Although the latter represents the idiosyncratic taste of its founder, it is, as far as I am aware, the largest single contemporary art collection open to the general public.  The art might be uneven but there is enough of it to merit the drive. On rare occasions, I’ll check whether something is going on at the Metropolitan Museum. I have not, for over a decade, bothered with the National Museum, my recollection being that, for all its size, all it housed of any worth was Luna’s “Spoliarium” and a few random sculptures. Apparently, things have changed and, surprisingly, given the abysmal reputation of our government, for the better.

A few weeks ago, I attended a ceremony at the National Museum marking the official handover of Hidalgo’s “Assassination of Governor Bustamante” to the government. The painting had been on long-term loan from the Locsin family. Both Leandro Locsin, a National Artist, and his wife Cecilia were collectors of Philippine art and artifacts and, it seems, self-appointed preservers of our heritage. Over the years, they and other members of their family have donated parts of their collection to public institutions forming, at least for some, the very core of them (an example being the gold exhibit at the Ayala Museum).  Based on the book I bought during the handover ceremony, the Locsins had always planned to donate Hidalgo’s famous painting to the Filipino people but had waited till they felt it would be properly protected.  

After the ceremony, I wandered through the rest of the museum, surprised to find that instead of two galleries, more than 11 are now open and all are, except for one painted a strange forbidding green, tastefully designed and curated.  If you turn left after walking out of the central gallery, the Hall of Masters, on the ground floor you pass, first, a large wooden carving by Abueva and then enter a gallery housing religious relics from the 17th to the 19th century, including an aretablo from the Church of San Nicolàs de Tolentino in Dimiao, Bohol, which, because it is housed here, survived the recent earthquake. It is so large that it is exhibited in halves. 

From there, you travel on through our colonial history, from our time under the control of Spain, through the revolution and onwards through our time under the Americans, the horrors of the Japanese occupation and, finally, to modern times and the country’s brief golden age. What is unique about this journey is that it is taken via the works of almost every great Filipino painter and sculptor. The names are heady: Luna, Hidalgo, Amorsolo, Tolentino, DelaRosa, Tampingco, Miranda, Joya, Ang Kiukok, Legaspi, Edades, Manansala, Malang, Ocampo, Francisco, Saguil. The art, ranging from the vividly representational to the gorgeously symbolic, makes you want to weep. It also makes you deeply proud. 

Confronted by an almost full panoply of great Philippine art, preserved for and presented to the Filipino people in this treasure of a museum, one is reminded of the depth and breadth of Philippine talent and that, at any given time, whether in the midst of war, poverty or unmitigated corruption, there is a type of genius that cannot be denied its flowering and, further, that such genius flows just as easily through Filipino blood as it does through the blood of other races.

I have visited countless museums in the world. I don’t need to name them but some are so large, their collections so vast, their exhibits have to be rotated constantly, their warehouses extending for miles beneath great cities. Some of these institutions are publicly funded. Some were founded on and are maintained by bequests from great industrial families. All of them, big or small, oft-visited or woefully neglected, are important, crucial for the preservation and cultivation of the soul of a country and the civilization and edification of its people.

As I walked through gallery after gallery in the National Museum, I realized that in the time I had spent avoiding the National Museum and, for that matter, complaining about corruption in government, the people charged with this particular institution, whether currently or previously employed there, had been hard at work — cataloguing, preserving, organizing and no doubt dancing the dance one has to in order to secure and utilize sufficient funding, all for the benefit of myself and others, like me, ordinary Filipinos. They have done a service to their country. I applaud their efforts and hope and encourage my readers to visit the National Museum to be similarly inspired. I did and I was.

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Please send any comments to Locsin@outlook.com. (By way of full disclosure: although I am related to the Locsins, I did not interview any members of the Locsin family or the staff of the National Museum for this article. All opinions and impressions are my own.)