#1095 - National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila Shots for Wednesday.
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Once upon a time on a Sunday humid noon when we stepped through the grand hallway of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila. Inside, is better with the air cool and still with the quiet and respectful silence in museums or libraries. I was with my wife and son and we had a prime target which was to see the most famous painting in the Philippines, Juan Luna's "Spoliarium." which is massive with around four meters in height alone and dominated the entire room it is on.
We stood before it of a while just like other visitors do while taking in the heartbreaking scene of fallen gladiators being dragged away. My son whispered that the scene "It's so sad," and he was not wrong about it. The painting shows the brutality under Roman rule also like a mirror for Spanish colonial times the Philippines and it serves as a lesson to this day.
From that awesome start, we walked our adventure floor by floor. We wandered through high ceilinged galleries, each room a new story in our nation's rich story. We saw some elegant portraits and contemporary arts. We've been here before but it never stopped to amaze us.
The museum felt like a family tree of different Filipinos doing their own kinds of arts for the world to see. We saw how art changed across generations: from the formal classic styles of the old age to the more modern expressions of the 20th century.
By the time our feet began to tire, we had mostly traveled through more than a century of all kinds of arts. We left with lots of remembrance photos but also with a sense of pride because we walked through the visual soul of the Philippines with its struggles and the breathtaking beauty through the eyes of our greatest artists.
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Shot taken in Manila, Philippines.
Image/s were shot using Samsung Z5 flip phone. ~rex