Museum Musings

Manila, the Philippines

September 26 / October 24, 2010

Sunday is free-admission day at the National Museum of the Philippines. Despite the come-on, its halls are hollow with just a handful of visitors. It seems that the museum has become a mausoleum of our historical remains – static and dead. Yet its halls should be hallowed. The museum is the country’s beating chest of historical treasures. It is said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Perhaps this is why history does repeat itself in the Philippines. How many of us step into the museum to be reminded?

National Museum of the Philippines

For the few who do, the museum wastes no time in thrusting visitors straight to its red-blooded heart. The Spoliarium is the rightful opening salvo.  A gold medalist in a fine arts exhibition in Madrid in 1884, this masterpiece by Filipino painter Juan Luna fills the first hall with its sheer size and severity.

Spatial Transcendence

Manila, the Philippines

September 26, 2010

“It’s not flat!” Karry, my Japanese friend, exclaimed as she was looking up at the ceiling of San Agustin Church in Manila. That one sentence proved that the church’s ceiling mural had fooled yet another gazer. And that is exactly what a trompe l’oeil (click here for the pronunciation) painting intends to do. The term is French for “deception of the eye”. It is a technique in visual arts that renders images on a flat surface to be realistically three-dimensional, and it has been used for centuries. Kids, 3D was not invented by James Cameron.

Trompe L'oeil Painting: San Agustin Church

Jakarta in a Bubble

Jakarta, Indonesia

September 21 / 23 – 24, 2010

There are more Muslims in Indonesia than in the entire Arabian Peninsula, where Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are located. In fact, Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. At Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, I was initially confused to see men washing their feet in a public restroom. Then I realized right beside the washroom was a musholla, an Islamic prayer room; and the act was part of their ritual ablution. Indeed, I had landed in a Muslim country.

Plaza Indonesia

But other than the ubiquitous musholla, there were not as many mosques and Arabesque architecture as I had expected, especially in Central Java where massive Hindu and Buddhist monuments are the major attractions. Flying back to Jakarta, I expected to witness more of the austere and conservative society that I had vaguely associated with Muslim culture. Instead, I found Dubai.