![]() ![]() Today, there is a whole set of galleries organized into eras, media and themes. ![]() Artifacts and memorabilia of Emilio Aguilar Cruz donated by his family Over the years, the museum’s collection has been steadily increasing. Following decades of shifting roles, during which it served as home to various offices, the building was finally turned over to the National Museum of the Philippines in 1998-an incarnation that it retains to this day. The structure was reconstructed in the 1940s, after which it became the Congress building. With docent moderating, students discuss Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium.” -PHOTOS BYJILSON SECKLER TIU Much of the original edifice, however, was destroyed during the last days of the Second World War. It was eventually converted into the Legislative Building in 1926. It was originally intended to serve as the National Library-part of Daniel Burnham’s grand plan for the capital. The building, built in 1921, was designed by Ralph Harrington Doane and Antonio Toledo. Situated on a busy intersection in the heart of Manila, the museum is a sprawling neoclassical structure grand and beautiful, somber yet intriguing, with stately Corinthian pillars lining its façade and an ornate pediment for its crown. True to the intention of its builders, the National Museum of Fine Arts is a building that is hard to miss. They trudged up and down the corridors, entered and exited rooms one after another, all the while talking among themselves as they contemplated the artworks. There were students in their uniforms, families of three generations, and trendy youth garbed in casual urban strolling alongside coiffed seniors. As I entered the lobby, I noticed that there were more people than usual. Yet my most recent visit was entirely different. Such visits, though always enriching, inevitably ended with me wishing that more people would come. I have been visiting the National Museum of Fine Arts twice a year for the past half-decade, and these visits were more or less the same: the thin crowds, the nearly deserted hallways, the silence that filled the galleries.
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