the ayala museum experience

Intrigued by articles about the Ayala Museum, I decided to go there myself to check it out on March 31… and to try to absorb as much culture as possible. :0)

Anyway, as luck would have it, I got in with a discounted admissions fee because some of the exhibit areas were closed. The only open exhibits were the dioramas about Philippine history and the paintings by Fernando Zobel and his nephew, Jaime.

On the 2nd floor… I thought I’ve seen the dioramas before (was it in fourth grade?). The gallery started with the prehistoric tableaus like the Tabon men in Palawan. Then, the arrival of Chinese and Arab merchants were protrayed in separate viewing areas. After them came the early explorations of Spaniards. The rest of the exhibits were quite predictable because they spanned the Spanish period until the Japanese occupation in the 1940s. What made that part of the museum unique was the multimedia segment. This was about the EDSA revolution in the 1980s. It featured the newspaper clips from that period and photo mosaics of nuns and civilians and military men. The pictures were larger than life, and was quite a sight to behold. Along the path, images of the past presidents were interspersed with the dioramas. I found it interesting that Carlos P. Romulo was quite vertically challenged (his height was around 5′0").

On the 3rd floor… This was a gallery of the artwork of Don Fernando and Don Jaime Zobel. Frankly, I did not get the point of Don Fernando’s work. All I saw were violent lines splashed on the canvas. I felt uneducated in contemporary art! In Hum II, I couldn’t remember discussions on the topic… I recall the emphasis on the classics (da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc) and the impressionists (Monet was my personal fave).

Still on the third floor… Being quite unhappy about that, I proceeded to check out Don Jaime’s work. I liked his better. There’s this fine art print that looked like clumps of red crystals (that I liked so much!). The lines were so solid and dark, contrasting to the luminiscence of the reflection passing through the prism. And there was a huge painting of birds flying over cogon grass. The curves were so fluid and smooth, just like the syllables in the haiku written next to it. I enjoyed these works better!

Back on the 1st floor… I started to hear the beginnings of a pre-concert warm up of a pianist. Too bad I couldn’t stay longer to watch the concert because I still had a long drive ahead of me. And I wanted to avoid the Friday rush hour traffic, which I’ve heard was bad in Makati.

The Ayala Museum was a great museum to go to. It’s not to academic like the National Museum, and there’s an emphasis on the arts. Too bad I went to museum alone. Anyway, there’s always a next time.