manila's metropolitan museum

i've been wanting to revisit the metropolitan museum for the longest time. last time i was there was 1st year high school.

with my two sisters and my sister's friend, we piled into a car last saturday afternoon and made our way over to the BSP Complex along Roxas Boulevard. entrance fee was an affordable P100, and made even affordable thanks to the generosity of my sister :)

we spent about 2 hours slowly making our way around the small museum. a lot of the paintings i recognized having seen during my first trip there.. i guess the museum's private collection isn't that big? they had a few other exhibits that were "new", like BSP's permanent exhibition (not my kind of art), the collection by indian artists upstairs (this was disappointing, the quality of the reproductions were really bad), a smattering of sculptures (loved the wire work.. damn should've gotten the name of the artist) plus an additional room with touchable art. they also have a gold & pottery exhibition downstairs that is unfortunately (and weirdly) closed during the weekends.

they have one section with a few paintings by juan luna i think it was. there were 2-dimensional versions displayed infront with descriptions in braille. smart though i think it would've made more sense to do them for ALL the paintings and not just a handful as you always want to make the most of the time of your visitors right?

i do feel that the met museum ought to update their shop as i find it a little sad. and what is with being closed on sunday's?! i always thought it was a museum standard (and obviously so) to be open during the weekend and be closed on mondays?! i find it a little annoying that pictures can't be taken too (so yes.. the photos in this blog were stealthily taken. lol), i don't think they harm the photos if the flash is off right?

nonetheless, i do like the met very much. while its age is beginning to show, i do love the simplicity of the layout with it's crisp white walls and high ceilings. plus i like the mix of painting genre's they have, with a special focus on filipino artists. the size is no match for the likes of the louvre or nyc's met, but any bigger and i may not have paid as much attention to each piece. you get a better appreciation of the each work's individuality here i feel. with the bigger museums, i have a tendency to quickly make the rounds of the rooms i am not so interested in and skip on to the galleries with the work i enjoy more. bigger museums are obviously meant to be explored in more than 1 day and i unfortunately never have the liberty of time. and besides, anymore than 3 hours in a museum and I pretty much want to pull my hair out.