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BY JOHNNY NOVERA
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Tuesday. September 12, 2017
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WE CAN see that the renovation of the old Iloilo Provincial Jail intended for another provincial museum is now almost finished. This is located between the Department of Tourism and the Hall of Justice, fronting a public park along Bonifacio Drive towards Forbes Bridge to La Paz district.
We are happy that the administration of Iloilo governor Arthur Defensor Sr. decided to convert the old provincial jail into a museum. This project will enhance our heritage just like the old provincial building on the southern side of our new capitol which was restored to keep its place in history.
What will happen is that we will have a second museum aside from Museo Iloilo that is named as a “provincial museum.”
Museo Iloilo is host to many of Iloilo’s historical treasures found in Panay before the arrival of the Spaniards. It has a collection of religious artifacts of the Hispano-Filipino era; Ilonggo paintings and sculptures, plus interesting finds of weaponries and armories of the Filipino-Spanish war and artifacts of World War II.
There is also a mini-library and photo gallery in one section where you can learn many things about the province through books and rare pre-war photos of Iloilo and the life of the Ilonggo before modernization came to the islands.
In 2007 when we visited the United Kingdom (UK), and were privileged to have a tour of downtown London that included a visit to the British Museum of Natural History, built side by side with the Albert and Victoria Museum.
It was the museum of natural history that greatly impressed us, and what we saw stuck to our memory up to this day.
The museum contained preserved creatures of the animal world and showed the evolution of the living animals that we have today. We saw the pre-historic dinosaur at the second floor which was animated as if alive and real. There were practically all kinds of animals in the museum, indicating the particular areas of the earth where they thrived.
There was a whale, the huge marine mammal with the size of a submarine, and one Philippine animal, a tiny bat that came from the mountains of Mindoro. The museum was like Noah’s Ark that had all kinds of creatures on it before the Great Flood.
On the other hand, the Albert and Victoria Museum contained more of fashion and the memorabilia of the wardrobe collection of the King and the Queen of England.
Now that we have our new provincial museum which is about finished, so as not to duplicate the function and exhibits of the old Museo Iloilo, may we recommend that we dedicate the new Iloilo museum as a Museum of Natural History to house an exhibit of our rich tierra and fauna in the Panay region.
Aside from flowers and plants exclusively growing in our area, we have reports of a rare breed of monkeys, wild pigs and birds that are native to the mountains of Panay and Guimaras. We must conserve them, otherwise they will completely disappear and lost to unlicensed gatherers or hunters that roam in our mountains today.
Yes, let us set up a Museum of Natural History! (For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com)/PN
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