In celebration of the sesquicentennial (150th) birth anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal, the Philippine's national hero, I asked my graduate students to visit museums that exhibit memorabilia for our dear renaissance Filipino man Jose Rizal, attend local and international academic symposium on The First World-Class Filipino Jose Rizal, travel to his ancestral house in Laguna, or pay respect to one of Asia's great intellectuals enshrined at Luneta Park, and so on...
I am posting in my blog with the writer's consent selected ethnography penned creatively by my students to contribute to the emerging sub-discipline of anthropology called 'Virtual Ethnography'.
Basically, virtually ethnography is also referred to as Webnography. We cannot deny the fact that with increasing use of technology and the Internet, there is now a demand for online spaces on various ethnographic accounts.
Ethnography by Gerald Magno
It was a rainy Thursday morning. Typhoon Falcon is battering the northwestern part of the country, bringing heavy monsoon rains to Southern Luzon including Metro Manila. I was about to go home that time after office because of this bed weather. But something came into my mind. I remembered that our professor in the Anthropology class required us to make a virtual ethnography about museums! And crap! I have one day to visit a museum since I am leaving the country for a three-week Leadership Training Course in South Korea.
Suddenly, it came all into my mind. It’s cramming time again! I have to look for a museum nearby. Our office is located in the Ortigas Center. And I can’t think of any museum at the vicinity. My first choice is the Museo ng Katipunan located at the Pinaglabanan Shrine in San Juan City – just a ride away from the office. I also live in San Juan so my problem is solved.
I used to read newspapers before packing up my things and a business column of the Philippine Star caught my attention. The title reads Rizal as a Great Malayan written by Boo Chanco in his column. As I read his article, he mentioned about the Lopez Museum and Library (LML). The columnist said it has one of the best Rizaliana collection-- his memorabilia (wallet, flute, binoculars, etc), his handwritten letters to his family, books he collected, first edition of Noli and Fili, original Manansala pen-and-ink drawings depicting characters of Rizal’s novels, the 100 years stamp during his centennial and many more. I came to know that like me, Lopez Group patriarch Don Eugenio Lopez was an avid Rizalista who travelled the world acquiring such Rizal memorabilia for sharing with the Filipino people.
In my one year of working in Ortigas, I didn’t know that there is a museum located just few blocks away. I’m excited to see the rare Rizaliana collections of the LML! So in a blink of an eye, I changed my mind. I’ll visit the LML instead of the Museo ng Katipunan.
The LML is located at the ground floor of the Benpres Bldg., Exchange Road corner
Meralco Avenue, Ortigas Center in Pasig City. At the lobby of the museum, a staff of LML told me that it is the oldest privatelyowned museum in the country. It was opened to the public on February 13, 1960 by brothers Eugenio and Fernando Lopez. It is actually dedicated to their parents, Benito and Presentacion. The Tayon-Igkas-Ugoy by Renan Ortiz Lopez Collection consists of over 19,000 Filipiniana titles by about 12,000 authors and preserves an invaluable collection of Philippine incunabula, rare
books, manuscripts, dictionaries, literary works in Western and vernacular languages, religious tracts, periodicals, newspapers, coffee table volumes, academic treatises, contemporary writing, maps, archival photographs, cartoons and microfilms.1 There is an entrance fee for those who want to visit. It’s P100.00 for non-students and P80.00 for students.
About Face
As part of the 150th birth anniversary Jose Rizal, the museum is presenting About Face. It explores the idea that the face represents the persona with which one confronts the world and how penetrable these public facades can be. In a broader sense, the exhibition is about facades – human and institutional – what we pose up front for others to come to know us through. It features works by contemporary artists xVRx, Renan Ortiz, Louie Talents and Alvin Zafra.
It also include works by Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Macario Vitalis, Fabian de la Rosa, Vicente Manansala, Juvenal Sanso, Fernando Amorsolo, Benedicto Cabrera, Fernando Zobel and the extensive Rizaliana holdings in light of the 150th birth commemoration of Dr. Jose Rizal.
At the foyer is an artwork by Renan Ortiz titled Tayon-Igkas-Ugoy (The Swing). It depicts Jose Rizal in a reverse position. The museum guide told to me that the artist wants the public to view Rizal in a non-conventional aspect. The gallery on the other hand exhibit the works of great Filipino painters from Juan Luna to Benedicto Cabrera.
My favourite part of the museum is the Rizaliana collections gallery. I saw plenty of Rizal’s letters to his family, things he used while in abroad and the first editions of his two great novels – the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Whenever I
visit museums and other historical sites, it makes me feel that I am travelling through time machine, looking back at history! The works of our contemporary artists are also amazing. I remember seeing a portrait painting by Alvin Zafra who used his fingernails to draw on sandpaper.
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