Like Prying on a Stranger’s Space

             Aristotle once said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”.

             More than the materials used to create a masterpiece, the reason and emotion behind the creation make the artwork more valuable. Every time I visit a museum, it creates a certain nostalgia. The feeling of travelling back in time. The trancelike experience of seeing an important piece from the past right within your reach. The surreal thought that a tangible part of history is available in the present time. 

           I must admit, for convenience, I decided to visit the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center. It is UP Diliman’s homegrown museum situated along Roxas Avenue. I have always planned to check all the interesting places inside the campus before I finish my degree and Vargas Museum was a good starter. 

           As a frequent jogger and biker in UP, I regularly see Vargas Museum from the university oval, almost hidden by the canopy of trees, as if deliberately covered to leave a mysterious ambience. 

            Initially, Jean (a classmate in Anthropology class) and I planned to stay in the museum for less than an hour since we both needed to catch our bus trips for out of town commitments. It turned out the other way, we stayed longer than what we planned. 

            As a preliminary to any museum, we were asked to settle the entrance fee (P 20.00 for UP students and P30.00 for everyone else) before roaming around the vicinity. Jean was teasing me when we were signing in the reception area. Aside from the basic personal information, the log book has a column for guests’ interest. I wrote museum and arts. I think I sounded phony. But I can probably say that I already appreciate art since I can remember. At a young age, I was already intrigued by Mona Lisa’s smile, questioned the motives of Picasso and touched by Malang’s creation. I tried sketching and painting with Van Gogh in mind and eventually realized that he is bipolar. 

Intangible Photographs

              I appreciate that the management restricted taking photo on the permanent exhibit section where works of some famous visual artists like Vicente Manansala, Fernando Amorsolo and Guillermo Tolentino are mounted.  I tried researching about this policy on flash photography inside museums and there are odd reasons why this policy exists, aside from the fact that the flash may have adverse effect on paintings and sculptures, but nonetheless, I would totally subscribe to this. Sometimes, memories are better encapsulated intangibly. 

                Like visiting a family ancestral house, museums give me circus of senses. Aside from my visual sense feasting on the exhibits, my olfactory sense also added flavor during the entire visit. It always happen to me whenever I visit my grandparents’ house. Museums have this distinct smell that creates bizarre and invisible dimension. The history is painted in the air.  

                This time though, I felt like entering someone else’s private property after learning that the first pieces showcased in the museum were originally the collections of Jorge B. Vargas, thus the name of the museum. According to the information posted inside the museum, Mr. Jorge B. Vargas donated his collection of artworks, stamps and coin and other personal memorabilia to UP Diliman on March 1, 1978 and the museum was formally inaugurated on February 22, 1897. He is an alumnus of the university and also served as the first Executive Secretary during the Commonwealth period. 

                One of the things I noticed was very few people were visiting the museum that time. I asked Kuya George, working in the museum for 24 years, about it. He said that people usually visit there as a group like field trips or side tours during conferences inside the university. Before, my narratives on museum visits as a boy who grew up in a province also involve school field trips since most of the museums in the Philippines are located in the capital cities. Also, private museums normally charge you a fortune. 

                While roaming around the permanent exhibition gallery, we met Diana, a first year public administration student. She is from Bicol region and now staying in one of the dormitories inside the campus. It was interesting to know that she went to Vargas museum alone and solely out of curiosity, not for academic purposes. We were chuckling while telling her that our visit was opposite from her motivation. But we surely both know that we gained something out of the visit even without photographs to aid out our memory. 

Vargas’ Bedroom 

                Since Kuya George has a lot of time to spare that time, he led us to an old looking room on the third floor, which I think most of the walk in visitors usually miss because it looks like a humble storage area from the outside. The room is full of personal belongings and memorabilia of Jorge B. Vargas, from the fountain pens he used to the boy scout attire he wore, to some of the minutes of the meetings he drafted to the books he read on his spare time. 

                We scrutinized all his possessions while an audio of his radio interview is playing in the background. It felt like gate-crashing in someone else’s bedroom. It felt strange, almost creepy.

Digging Deeper 

                After going through the memorabilia of Vargas, we checked the rest of the third floor. I particularly enjoyed the photos of archeological excavations. Jean said archeology can be a nice runaway career when we get tired of the corporate rat race. I can totally agree. I like the elaborate excavation procedure to unearth a fragile piece from the past that can bind together the present and the future. 

                One interesting photo series was an excavation in Pinagbayanan in San Juan, Batangas in April 2010. The researchers posited that the excavated structures of koloong or water well were part of a Spanish Plaza Complex where Spanish elites previously resided due to the presence of church and municipal hall ruins. Proximity to these institutions display wealth, influence and power. 

                Meanwhile, other contemporary pieces are showcased on the third floor. I am still thinking about the art installation of a woman’s head on top of a brick with coconuts and soil scattered around it. But then I realized, art can be all bizarre, crazy and limitless and museum is a safe place for all these quirkiness. I hear Van Gogh calling me.