ILOILO City – The Western Visayas Regional Museum on Bonifacio Drive here will open one of its five galleries next month.
Gallery III will showcase Western Visayas’ “tangible cultural heritage”, said Ana Maria Theresa Labrador, assistant director of the National Museum.
The National Museum is overseeing the operation of the Western Visayas Regional Museum.
The regional museum would also have the following galleries but their opening dates have yet to be set:
* Gallery I – Geological and Paleontological Exhibition Hall
* Gallery II – Flora and Fauna of Western Visayas
* Gallery IV – Intangible Cultural Heritage of Western Visayas’ Indigenous Peoples
* Gallery V – Archaeological Sites and Collection
Labrador said the National Museum was hopeful of opening three of these by October, the Museums and Galleries Month.
The National Museum may also bring to the regional museum the “Oton Death Mask”, a pre-Hispanic gold mask found at an ancient gravesite in Barangay San Antonio, Oton, Iloilo.
The regional museum won’t be collecting entrance fees, said Labrador.
The Western Visayas Regional Museum is the renovated old Iloilo provincial jail. On April 11, 2018 when the provincial government of Iloilo turned it over to the National Museum, the edifice was declared an “important cultural property.”
According to Director Jeremy Barns of the National Museum, the old provincial jail possessed “exceptional cultural and architectural significance relative to the local area’s history and culture”, thus merited official recognition as an intrinsic part of the heritage and patrimony of the Filipino people.
Its status as an “important cultural property” was contained in Museum Declaration No.22-2017.
The 868-square meter old provincial jail was established in 1911. It was vacated in 2006; the provincial government built a modern jail in Barangay Nanga, Pototan, Iloilo.
The old’ jail’s rehabilitation was done in two phases. The first involved retrofitting costing some P20 million.
The second phase included, among others, the building of a dome and landscaping. For this, P80 million was allocated./PN
