Brave new world in museum work unfolds in Baguio

Inquirer Northern Luzon
Brave new world in museum work unfolds in Baguio

By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:40:00 05/07/2008

BAGUIO CITY – This museum, perhaps the first of its kind in the country, will tell a community’s story from the perspective of its people.

The Baguio Historical and Mining Museum will rise on one of the city’s historic sites – Dominican Hill, where the ruins of a monastery lie. It will be led by its foundation, chaired by Philippine Ambassador to Germany Delia Albert, in time for the city’s centennial celebration in 2009.

“There’s a brave new world in museum work – one that employs modern technology, such as biotechnology, but…offers an atmosphere of warmth, which encourages collaboration with and participation from the community,” says Marian Pastor Roces, who has been appointed curator of the proposed museum.

Roces describes the project as “community-centered,” meaning residents can participate and collaborate with the museum staff to interpret data rather than have these interpreted by outsiders.

“This is a museum that learns from the community and tells the community’s diverse stories of interaction,” she told reporters during the project’s launching on May 2. The stories include not only those from the past but also those that are “continuing, unfolding,” she said.

How Baguio evolved as a chartered city because of the mining industry that boomed in the early 1900s in the neighboring gold-rich communities of Benguet is one such account.

Albert, a native of Baguio, says the mining industry’s growth is intertwined with the city’s development. She points at the four yellow dots against a green backdrop in the official seal, representing the four original neighboring mining communities in Benguet.

A lot of stories related to the mining industry still need to be told, Albert said. She cites the Kankanaey and Ibaloi traditional mining experts who claim they can find gold in rocks by using their tongue and saliva.

Even before American colonial soldiers-turned-gold prospectors came and founded the forerunners of today’s big mining corporations, the Spanish colonial government had also heard of gold guarded by “fierce natives” in the Cordillera’s pine-clad mountains.

Collaboration

Written accounts showed that Spaniards had organized gold expedition teams that reached Benguet through horse trails built by the Igorot natives through forced labor.

The historical and mining museum will incorporate all these stories, according to foundation officials. In fact, there is still a wealth of unstudied pre-20th century materials about Baguio in museums around the world, which can be reproduced and stored here, says Roces.

She cites 19th-century maps of Baguio and archives of tourist photos that can help tell how Baguio evolved into a metropolis.

Among the key sources of museum materials are the Philippine National Archive, University of Chicago, Michigan State University, US Army Archives in Maryland, Leiden University, Smithsonian Institution, Museum fur Volkenkunde in Vienna, the British Museum, and Musee du Quay Branly in Paris.

In this “brave new world of museology (museum studies),” collaboration is the key word, Roces says. And how will this collaboration with the community work?

Roces and her staff will facilitate the creation of a body of local experts – from academics and elders or pioneers to a wide range of professionals – to gather historical data and artifacts and later collectively interpret and represent these in various documentation forms (video, photographs or manuscripts).

“Data gathering won’t only be done by academics; even neighborhood groups can gather old photos from other neighbors, for example,” she says. “It’s going to be an entire series of action and process that involves community participatory mechanisms from beginning to end.”

Leonora San Agustin, curator of the Baguio-Mountain Provinces Museum, agrees on the need for experts. She cites an innocent-looking rock given to her by former Baguio Mayor Francisco Paraan. “I didn’t know what the rock was for until a traditional miner told me it was where traditional miners would grind gold ore,” she says.

“We need all the experts we can mobilize, especially now that our local miners are disappearing with demise of the mining industry here,” says San Agustin.

Heritage conservation

A product of more than four years of planning and consultation, the Baguio Historical and Mining Museum is “a positive step for heritage conservation,” Maria Isabel Ongpin, the foundation president, says. It is “an idea of Baguio residents, past and present,” she says.

Albert says the project would give people who have ties with Baguio a reason “to be proud once more of this fantastic city that reared us.”

The city government, however, has yet to amend a resolution turning over the Dominican Hill property to the museum foundation. The resolution does not include the turnover of the monastery ruins.

“We need the building first,” says Albert. The 33-room Dominican monastery was the city’s most expansive stone structure before 1920, according to the book, “City of Pines.”

The people behind the museum project have already ironed out plans to beat a very tight deadline, as the city counts down to its centennial on Sept. 1 next year.

Roces says the new museum would employ state-of-the-art technology in helping the local community gather and interpret data. “It’s going to be high-tech, but congenial,” she says, noting how technology sometimes alienates, if not intimidates, some people. “So we have to create a special encounter for people to dialogue and communicate with one another.”

The secret is building it with a “delightful yet elegant” ambience, she says.

Some old-timers are enthusiastic about the project and its site, which overlooks the city. “I live there and it’s a perfect, beautiful place for us to chat, dialogue and meditate as we watch the sunset,” Paraan says.

The museum intends to become a repository for the memorabilia of residents and tourists, a science center that is at the same time a crucible for art, a high-tech learning facility, a tourist destination and national and international crowd draw, and a space for encounter, dialogue, meditation, and festivity.

It will be divided into five spaces: a study center on urbanization, oral history and family memorabilia trust, a Philippine center for geology, an international center for jewelry design, and a study center for Cordillera-lowland cultures encounter.