Enigmatic Objects: Notes towards a History of the Museum in the Philippines

by Resil B. Mojares

In Enigmatic Objects, Resil B. Mojares traces from colonial history the beginnings of museums in the Philippines— from the gabinetes and museos of Spanish colonial–era educational institutions and the private collections of ilustrados, to the first attempts at institutionalizing public libraries and museums in the early period of American rule. Through vignettes that take off from such eccentric and eclectic items as the earliest extant portrait of a Filipino, skulls of bandits measured to explain the phrenology of crime, the fabled pestle of an indigenous hero, and teapots made of coconuts, the book itself becomes a cabinet of curiosities where the act of collecting and displaying intertwines with narrating a nascent Filipino nation.

435 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

About the author

Trained in literature and anthropology, Resil B. Mojares won several National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle for works in fields as diverse as literary criticism, urban and rural history, and political biography.

He has been a recipient of prizes for his short stories, a national fellowship in the Essay from the UP Creative Writing Center, and teaching and research fellowships from the Ford, Toyota, and Rockefeller foundations, Fulbright Program, and Social Science Research Council (New York).

He has served as visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, University of Hawaii, and University of Michigan.

He teaches at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City.

Reviews

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the books of Resil Mojares feels like sitting in a lecture of a favorite professor. You're thoroughly entertained while being inundated with information, thoughts, and ideas that you would never know and absorb somewhere else. In this book, Mojares explores the idea of collecting artifacts and the notion of building museums in the Philippines. He covered topics as diverse as the nascent attempts of creating something resembling our current museums by our first schools, the collections of Pedro Paterno and Jose Rizal, the colonial transgressions against the dugong and tamaraw, and the underpinning of our national identity in our paintings, sculptures, exhibitions, and other works of art. It's an amazing smorgasbord of traversing our colonial past through artworks and the collecting process which gives the book's discussion of history all the more refreshing and insightful. I had a comfortable time reading this book and I highly recommend this to anyone interested in Philippine history and Philippine art.