Scenes At The Museum

I can’t recount the excitement and experience of being in a museum (in Manila or in any history-rich towns in the Philippines) I had been. The details seemed to have eluded me. I’m not even sure if I missed a lot, having visited only 3 museums so far. A friend-classmate from Laguna took us to Rizal’s House in Calamba when we were still in college (1990 or 1991). With my colleagues in Mapua, I dropped by a museum in Vigan, on our way to Laoag. That was summer of 1994. In December, 2001, during a book-selection tour in Singapore, we visited the museum in Sentosa Island. These visits took place at different times and with different groups of persons of different characters. However, the capture-those-moments poses before the camera, with cues that had evolved from “Say cheese!” to “Say wait!” to “Say anything!” to fake the frozen smiles hiding boredom, hunger and exhaustion, was common in all these occasions. This is a kind of scene common in museums that do not prohibit picture-taking inside. These scenes, if (they can be) imprinted indelibly as 3D images in the brain, are like museum pieces that are worth-keeping and retrieving from time to time. Honestly, I was more interested in watching people pore over the intricateness of ancient art pieces or jewelry items, dissect the crudeness of ancient field or hunting implements, or appreciate the utility of, sometimes, funny-looking house wares. I always wondered what were in their minds. I wish I could capture their facial expressions. The frozen images could have been good display in a museum of facial expressions. I’ve always imagined how different persons of different ages and from different walks of life morph their faces unconsciously to show awe, being impressed or puzzled, marvel, surprise, indifference, dread and admiration. Even faces with a blank expression never fail to fascinate me. A face with a blank expression shows a facial expression.

These were the images in my mind on our way to the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. We were from Tatung University where the Japan/Taiwan/Korea TriCountry Conference in Chemical Engineering was being held. The after-lunch sessions were parallel technical sessions on topics which actually didn’t interest us. Anyway, we would be back the following day to attend technical sessions on topics in Thermodynamics and Biofuels. It was 10 past 1 in the afternoon when we finally reached the museum. We got off the taxi right just a meter away from main entrance of the National Palace Museum. At the entrance, we were right away informed through the ads-like strip on the two (or three) LCDs strategically mounted on the walls of the main lobby that the museum management does not allow use of camera inside.

It was expected.