Even as vaccines begin to make their way around the world, museums and galleries are most likely among the industries which will be last to make a complete return to operations. Here in the Philippines to be specific, museums and galleries, along with cultural centers and libraries, are considered non-essentials and can only open under Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MGCQ), with corresponding rules on safety.
It has therefore been quite a while since the National Museum of the Philippines complex in Manila saw long queues of guests, which of course has been very disheartening for the community. But just like the rest of the nation, the vanguards of the country’s precious arts and artifacts proved to be resilient, resourceful and innovative as they quickly built and steeled an online presence through various projects aimed at educating more people about the country’s identity through the works of the masters and ultimately to excite them in returning to the museum when it is finally safe to do so.
In this interview with Ana Maria Theresa Labrador, PhD., Deputy Director-General for the National Museum of the Philippines, The Sunday Times Magazine brings readers up to speed on how this important Manila landmark adapted to the new normal and how it plans to carry on in this new year.
“At the end of the day, the collections we have are really the Filipino peoples’,” Labrador expressed. “We’re the custodians of these priceless pieces so it is our responsibility to look after them and make sure that the next generation and the generations to come enjoy their right to experience them too.”
Gone digital
The National Museum of the Philippines is comprised of three main buildings in Manila, namely Fine Arts, Anthropology and Natural History. It further runs 15 more museums across the country.
When the pandemic forced strict lockdowns in Metro Manila in March 2020, the museum wasted no time in digitizing collections with the aim of showcasing them not only to researchers and art afficionados but to as wide an audience as possible via the internet.
The team first scanned past publications to be used as free references and in no time were able to launch a digital publication of their studies on basi revolt paintings. According to Labrador, they are in the process of finishing another one featuring the museum and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ collections.
In April, they launched a YouTube channel, which continues to boast of informative videos, slideshows and webinars on such topics as history, indigenous mining, biodiversity and fossils.
By October, they kicked off a series of virtual interactive and educational tours on their Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, in an effort to continue celebrations for the museums’ 199th anniversary. To date, their social media accounts have gathered approximately 259,437 followers across all three platforms.
According to Labrador, their team takes pride in how varied yet detailed these tours came to be. The regional museums for example designed tours focused on the importance of local culture amid defining our national identity.
When it comes to features, 360-degree panoramic tours continue to be available on their website, where users can choose a leisurely “walkthrough” or head straight to areas of interest in the famed art gallery accompanied by narrator or virtual tour guide as provided before for the visually impaired. There, on view up close are the works of Guillermo Tolentino, Félix Resurrección Hidalgo and Mariano Benlliure, and of course, Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium,” in a hall of its own.
To engage children as well, the museum complimented the tours with free downloadable coloring sheets of these precious pieces.
All falling under the social media program #MuseumFromHome, the team’s digital efforts were successful in highlighting the varied arts and sciences collections housed in the complex, presented in very techy ways. For example, in posting photos of individual pieces, the hashtags #MaritimeMonday, #TrowelTuesday, #WildlifeWednesday and #FossilFriday came to be.
Special monthly uploads were also organized where appropriate just like #HiblaStories to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Month in October and a collection of Filipino Christmas symbols in December. Most recently, the museum featured National Hero Jose Rizal’s large body of work in line with his 124th death anniversary on December 30 in a virtual tour titled, “The National Hero in Art: Works by Jose Rizal, and Portraits from the Collection of the National Museum.”
“This include four excellent sculptures and a rare pencil drawing [from] his exile in Dapitan [which] allowed him to create fascinating sculptures, which are on display in a special gallery at the National Museum of Fine Arts,” reads an Instagram post from the digital exhibit.
Finally making all this impressive output of social media projects interactive is the #AskAConservator feature of the website where the public can meet the hardworking groups and individuals who come from diverse backgrounds and expertise with the singular goal of maintaining every single piece housed in the complex.
Moreover, virtual workshops and webinars helped to increase “visitors” to the museum on a regular basis.
Moving forward
With the country still expecting mass vaccinations by mid-year, Labrador said the National Museum will not slow down in the least in bringing the complex’s singular experiences digitally to Filipino homes in all aspects of arts and culture.
The visual arts. Online arts exhibits — such as the currently available YouTube content “Placuna Placenta: Capis Shells and Windows to Indigenous Artistry,” which features the notable year-long capis exhibition mounted by the zoology, arts and heritage divisions one Independence Day — will proliferate while the country gradually returns to the more familiar way of life.
“We focus not just the artistry, but what each exhibit calls for,” Labrador noted. “For Pacuna Placenta for example, part of the advocacy is also the conservation of the environment so that [the online exhibit] talks about how these shells may actually dwindle in the very near future.”
The deputy director general particularly invites the public to check out the Foto-óleo exhibit, first unveiled in October, where artists from the 19th and 20th centuries used oil paint directly on black and white photos to colorize and make them more life-like and visually appealing; as well as video of 115 artworks exhibited at the Philippine Center in New York before the pandemic. These works were stranded in the US since arriving there in March following travel and customs issues.
At the turn of the year, the National Museum finds themselves conserving certain artboards from the travelling collection where they found “issues,” among them pieces by National Artists like Ang Kiukok and BenCab, who had yet to be recognized as such when their pieces went to New York in 1974.
Very soon, Labrador promised these works will be ready for online viewing, expressing, “We’ll be very keen to find out how young people will respond to these pieces since they weren’t even born when they were made.”
Sciences and education. Said Labrador, the National Museum will always provide fun and educational activities such as their successful webinar on women in the field of botany and exhibit conversations using applied physics and chemistry.
In fact, she is already working on a persistent request that appeared across their social media sites all through last year.
“It’s a module based on taking all the stuff that you have in your room for instance and creating a story using just the objects. It will to see that done in a bigger museum, which we believe will help the public appreciate what we have here much more.”
Meanwhile, in partnership with Department of Education, the National Museum is geared at developing more content that can assist students and children carry on the blended learning setup. Just like last year, they welcome teachers to the complex and the satellite museums to take videos of themselves to use in their online lectures about natural history, geology and paleontology among others.
On-site. Even as museums continue to be closed to the public as 2021 set in, Labrador told The Sunday Times Magazine they will carry on with efforts to show solidarity with the Filipino people whenever they can. Last year for example, they lit the façade of their Manila buildings with colors significant to Manila Day, the national 18-Day Campaign to End Violence Against Women, World Mental Health Day, and more.
Most importantly, the team are regularly required to come onsite to undergo retraining to adapt to the many changes the pandemic brought that are bound to remain post-Covid-19.
“Besides training them on the new standards of safety, we know we really need to do much more in terms of making the National Museum and our other museums as enjoyable as possible for visitors. That’s why we’ve been retraining our staff, our security personnel and even our cleaning staff to be able to readily point visitors to a particular exhibit they want to see and so on.”
Additional facilities are also in the plans like a nursery for visitors who come with their children and the incorporation of interactive features across all exhibits when possible.
“Having too many visitors before was a good problem for the team so they’re already longing for the day when they are allowed to come back. Until then, they will continue to work on making the museum and its programs better which is why we will keep on finding ways to encourage the public to take interest in being part of all this. This museum, after all, like I said, has always been their museum.”