A Day In The Art Museum

Every Sunday, the National Art Gallery, Museum of the Philippines is free for the public, so last Easter Sunday, me and some of my friends went to see the collections that they have.

Come and join me on this special tour.

The National Art Gallery is housed in the old congress building. The building was originally intended as a Public Library as proposed in Daniel Burnham's 1905 Plan for Manila. Designed by Ralph Harrington Doane, the American consulting architect of the Bureau of Public Works, and his assistant Antonio Toledo. Construction of the building began in 1918 and completed in 1921.

The Old House of Representatives Session Hall (also known as "The Hall of the Masters")

Here you can find two great works: Juan Luna's Spolarium and Hidalgo's interpretation of the assassination of Governor-General Bustamante.

Gallery I (Luis I. Ablaza Hall)

Colonial Philippine religious art from the 17th to the 19th centuries, prominent among which is aretablo from the Church of San Nicolás de Tolentino in Dimiao, Bohol – a NationalCultural Treasure – together with a selection of carved religious images (santos), reliefs and polychromes.

Gallery III

Philippine art of the academic and romantic period of the last three decades of the 19th century, featuring the work of Juan Luna and key contemporaries like Lorenzo Guerrero, Gaston O’Farrell.

Gallery IV (Fundación Santiago Hall)

Late 19th century period of works by Félix Resurrección Hidalgo are featured together with sculptures by Isabelo Tampinco.

Gallery V

Works from the Philippine national hero Jose Rizal including four original sculptures and one fine drawing from his 1886 sojourn in Berlin.

A Mother's Revenge

The Hermit

Gallery VIII (Silvina and Juan C. Laya Hall)

The late contemporaries and artistic successors of Luna and Hidalgo who were active in the late Spanish colonial period and into the American occupation, including Fabian de la Rosa, Jorge Pineda, Irineo Miranda, Fernando Amorsolo, and numerous other masters who shaped Philippine art before and contemporaneous to the advent of Modernism in the country.

An exhibit on paintings and work depicting the Japanese occupation.

Diosdado M. Lorenzo (1947)

Gallery dedicated to The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines, a set of four paintings by Carlos V. Francisco specially commissioned for the entrance hall of the Philippine General Hospital in 1953.

Various studies by Fernando Amorsolo

Shot glasses  mounted on plywood by Mauro 'Malang' Santos