D1 THESE WALLS HAVE...
“Intramuros is a powerful space, one that holds personal memories and one that has shaped our cultural memory as a nation,” Sec. Berna continues. “This is our history and it must be told. Here local and international tourists have the avenue to hear our stories, when they visit Museo de Intramuros. They will also learn that exploring the walls of this walled city is not only a way to traverse our history, but also offers a glimpse into our creative past and its potential for the future.”
Inside the Museo is a varied collection of religious art and artifacts dating back to the Spanish times, from intricately detailed retablos and reredos and finely crafted monstrances, to oil portraits and wooden sculptures of saints. These were collected not just from the Spanish churches found in Intramuros but from various historical sites in the Philippines.
The collections, carefully curated by Dr. Esperanza Gatbonton, Gino
Gonzales, Dr. Cecilia De La Paz,
Santiago Pilar, and Martin Tinio Jr., are grouped into six galleries: Imágenes / indigena, The Imaculate Conception, The Religious Orders, The Patronato Real and the Establishment of Parishes, Religious Colonial Paintings, and The Establishment of a Parish and Sacred Vessels. The pieces on display represent only 30 percent of IA’s entire collection. Every six months, the Museo will feature a new batch.
“It takes a lot of nerve and a lot of courage to put up something like this,” Dr. Gatbonton tells Manila Bulletin Lifestyle. “To be frank, when we began the project, there was really nothing like this. We were supposed to restore the walls, but that didn’t mean just restoring the walls per se but also the historical lifestyle—what went on inside these walls before. The collection was put into it because we had to recreate that lifestyle, which was erased by the [Second World] War.”
One interesting bit of observation Dr. Gatbonton makes was about opposition to the project, and there were many who didn’t like the idea of restoring a Spanish church destroyed by World War II and turning it into a museum that houses artifacts from the colonial era.
“Many were against it, saying it’s a colonial [project],” she explains. “How did I answer that? Well, I told them that Filipinos were right there during that [colonial] past. This is our country. We participated in its making. I don’t buy the idea that we did not participate at all. We were right there. The builders of the wall were Filipinos—not Chinese—and it’s on the record. Their names are there. Bakit hindi lumalabas? We are so receptive of what has been said by other people. We don’t do our own research. With this, we get a glimpse of what really happened.”
It’s an interesting thought, one that mirrors that idea proposed by
William Henry Scott in his 1978 book Cracks in the Parchment Curtain. Scott suggests that even with the absence of historical texts that talk about “pre-Hispanic Filipinos,” it’s possible to catch a glimpse of early Filipinos through the “cracks” in colonial historical documents. With Museo de Intramuros, we can see Filipino craftsmanship present in the collections of colonial religious pieces.
“We Filipinos have always tended to accept that we were the tacit receivers of artistic stimuli from abroad,” Sec. Berna adds. “This collection proves that the Philippines was as much a giver.”
As Dr. Gatbonton pointed out, some might find this to be “controversial,” saying that what is colonial is not Filipino. But nothing can be more mistaken in understanding the complexity of Philippine history and culture. In the desire to find what is “truly Filipino,” it’s easy to be lured into the pitfalls of misguided post-colonial theories. What a collection like those housed inside Museo de Intramuros does is to anchor this search for identity into historical reality.
We were supposed to restore the walls, but that didn’t mean just restoring the walls per se but also the historical lifestyle—what went on inside these walls before. The collection was put into it because we had to recreate that lifestyle. —Esperanza Gatbonton