National Museum introduces landmark free-entrance policy

In a bid to nurture a growing museum-going audience, particularly among Filipinos, the National Museum of the Philippines is offering “permanently free of charge” admission starting July 1.

The National Museum announced the landmark decision in a Facebook post on June 30, saying that the free admission covers all visitors, Filipino or foreign, to its museums nationwide.

Juan Luna’s Spoliarium is the main attraction at the National Art Gallery which is one of the key components of the National Museum of the Philippines.

The Museum’s Board of Trustees reportedly decided on the free-admission policy “in order to build upon significant spikes in viewership, especially among younger Filipinos” noted in recent years.

The marked increase in visitors has been observed since 2013 whenever the museum has waived entrance fees to mark important occasions such as National Arts Month in February, National Heritage Month in May and National Museums and Galleries Month in October.

For the second year, aside from February and May, the National Museum also offered free entrance for the whole month of June to mark Philippine Independence Day (June 12) and national hero Jose Rizal’s birth anniversary (June 19). The Museum has a gallery devoted to Rizal which features his artistic works such as the sculpture Mother’s Revenge, a declared National Cultural Treasure, and his drawing of the view of Gendarmenmarkt from his visit to Berlin in 1886.

In 2015, the National Museum reportedly logged a record number of 8,000 visitors on June 12.

In its statement, the National Museum said it has always aimed to enhance universal access to its exhibits of national patrimony and heritage among Filipinos.

“With this new policy we hope to reach more people than ever before, both by encouraging visits to our museums, and by bringing the National Museum's programs and resources to communities throughout the national capital and all the regions of our archipelago,” the National Museum statement read.

Online reactions to the announcement have been varied, with many welcoming the move allowing free access and some expressing concern on how the museum will be able to sustain maintenance and operating costs.

The National Museum said in its statement that the free admission is supported “by a solid institutional budget drawn ultimately from all Filipino taxpayers through the national budget.”

In recent years, the National Museum has rehabilitated its image from a perceived outdated institution into one that is abuzz with activity and abundant with artworks and objects representing national patrimony.

The advent of social media and the rise of bloggers and Internet-savvy users, particularly among the youth, have helped spread the word about continuous developments at the National Museum. The Museum itself maintains a Facebook page where details and photos of ongoing projects are posted.

The National Art Gallery, housed at the old Legislative Building on P. Burgos St. in Manila, has been at the core of the rehabilitation. One of the key changes in 2010 involved the institution’s main draw, Juan Luna’s Spoliarium, which was moved in its display space to give it more prominence.

National Museum director Jeremy Barns also pushed for the renovation of old Senate Session Hall, exposing its original towering columns and highlighting the architectural work of Juan Arellano and the sculptures of Isabelo Tampinco.

Barns and a team of in-house conservation and restoration experts mapped out a plan on how the restoration could be best handled.

"Based on assessments made possible through the dismantling, it was found that it would be possible to restore in virtually its entirety the Session Hall as originally designed, and present to the public the space as it appeared through the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s before post-war interventions were made that had since deteriorated,” Barns told this writer just before the space was re-opened to the public in 2012.

Since 2010, the Museum’s number of galleries has steadily increased to showcase artworks that had been gathering dust in storage, as well as newly sourced collections of Filipino art masters.

“Our goal is to have only fifteen percent of our collections in storage, with the bulk to be shown to the people, as it should be,” said Dr. Ana Labrador, National Museum assistant director, in a previous interview with this writer.

The Museum also has been actively seeking the transfer of significant art collections from other government institutions whose core mandates do not involve art management.

For example, National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco’s The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines was placed on indefinite loan to the National Museum by the University of the Philippines. The four-painting series, a declared National Cultural Treasure, had been hanging at the Philippine General Hospital lobby since first being commissioned in 1953 until its transfer to the museum in 2011.

In 2012, the Museum secured the turnover of the GSIS art collection consisting of over 300 artworks, including Juan Luna’s Parisian Life. The collection – which also includes paintings by National Artists Fernando Amorsolo, Carlos Francisco, Vicente Manansala, H.R. Ocampo, Bencab and large-scale tapestries and paintings by National Artist Federico Alcuaz – are now showcased in the GSIS Wing.

Work has also been underway on the National Museum of Natural History, housed at the former Department of Tourism building in Rizal Park, which is expected to be opened in 2017.

The new museum’s anchor Tree of Life – consisting of a glass and steel dome canopy and a steel framework trunk – was ceremonially turned over to the National Museum by its private project partners just last June 28.