AS FVR goes to his reward, his military, political, and personal accomplishments are reviewed and appreciated as well they should be.

One deed has not been mentioned. It was FVR in his time as president who paved the way for the National Museum to have a permanent home. And there it is with three beautiful neoclassical buildings housing Anthropology, Fine Arts and Natural History. The National Museum has been established as a government trust, an institution that is meant to be educational, scientific and cultural, the repository of documents, artifacts, and keeper of the heritage of the Filipino. And it is there in permanent residence, thanks to FVR.

Before that, for almost a century, our National Museum was a tenant or a homeless entity that found itself transferred from one government office to another, none of which was a home for it. It was treated as a poor relative, tolerated but barely welcomed by other government agencies to share their space.

The National Museum’s past history is a story of impermanence, abrupt changes, and many dispensations. Originally the Museo-Biblioteca created by a royal order of the Spanish monarch on Aug. 12, 1887, it materialized in October 1891 on Cabildo Street in Intramuros next to the Casa de la Moneda, the Philippine Mint. Sometime after, it was transferred to Quiapo (Calle Gunao, name no longer existing) until the American Occupation, and then it was summarily abolished by the Philippine Commission of 1901 and replaced by a Museum of Ethnology, Natural History and Commerce under the Department of Public Instruction. It was meant to complement another agency created by the Philippine Commission — the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes — which seemed to have evinced much interest from the American occupiers.

Then came the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 where tribesmen were sent off to be part of the exhibits and a name change — Philippine Museum covering Ethnology and Natural History, still under the Department of Public Instruction. The year 1916 brought another development in the cultural field — a Fine Arts Division was incorporated into the Philippine Library and National Archives, which seem to have been one entity at the time. They called it the Philippine Library and Museum, this time inexplicably under the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, History and Ethnology were left to the Museum, which was placed under the Bureau of Science.

By 1928 to 1939, a National Museum by name was created under the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources; hard to explain the logic of this move but at least it rated a building in the Port Area which it occupied briefly. In its new identity, the National Museum had Ethnology, History and was given Fine Arts, but Natural History was not included. Then another reversal came in 1933, Fine Arts was taken away from it and put under the Philippine Library. But it was left with Ethnology, and a new addition, Anthropology and its subset of subjects. Natural History was still with the Bureau of Science. In fact, the National Museum itself was under the Bureau of Science though in 1939, it was at last given Natural History. Perhaps these changes were part of a natural evolution as the government put together its cultural agencies.

But the 1945 Battle for Manila destroyed everything put together in all cultural agencies, resulting in entire collections being lost, which meant that after the war, there had to be a re-creation of what was lost. Natural History and Fine Arts were again returned to the National (new name for the Philippine) Library. What was left of the National Museum was placed under the Executive Secretary, and eventually transferred to the Department of Education. Thus, it continued its nomadic existence with parts given or removed.

It went from place to place. Gemma Cruz-Araneta, a former director of the National Museum, remembers holding office at the Bureau of Mines somewhere in Ermita. Only in 1966 was it given regulatory functions as the National Museum by Republic Act 4846, which also elaborated that it was mandated to protect and preserve Philippine cultural properties. One result of this law was the National Planetarium.

Because the National Museum was in an inappropriate building somewhere in Ermita, it had to give up its historical collection to the National Historical Institute.

Meanwhile, an association of private citizens banded together as the Concerned Citizens for the National Museum. Organized as friends of the National Museum, they tried to help it as best they could under the circumstances. Its first president was the art patron Purita Kalaw Ledesma. With the Senate building left empty by martial law, the National Museum was allowed one floor. It was on borrowed time, not given the whole building. It was not much and in time the Senate returned, followed by the Office of the Ombudsman, which resulted in the museum being relegated somewhere between the two offices, again in cramped circumstances of sharing a building.

Meanwhile, the Concerned Citizens for the National Museum, noting that late in the 20th century the country’s National Museum was a neglected orphan unable to be an established and influential presence in national life for its nomadic status, agitated for a home for it in the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s. Regime change in the late 1980s brought a halt to the proceedings but once stability returned, this group began a signature campaign for a permanent home for the National Museum. It took some years but it did raise consciousness about the National Museum’s plight. The transitory, impermanent and constantly changing conditions that the museum had to adjust to since 1887 became public knowledge and a cause for a demand for correction.

In 1994 when the finance department was about to vacate its building, the then finance secretary, Ramon del Rosario, thought the National Museum might make use of it. FVR was the president then and in a timely move of political will and decisionmaking, formed a committee to study how to give the National Museum a permanent home. It was a seminal moment of respect for history, legacy and identity when the appointed committee came up with the idea which FVR acted on, of ceding to the National Museum the three neoclassical buildings in the heart of Manila — the Finance building now the National Museum of the Filipino People, the Senate building now the National Museum of Fine Arts and the Tourism building now the National Museum of Natural History. It was executed by presidential decree signed by FVR and eventually the National Museum’s ownership of the buildings was incorporated as law in The National Museum Act filed by Sen. Edgardo Angara. The National Museum is now an autonomous trust with a board of trustees and the President of the Philippines as its patron, and it now has a dignified permanent home.

It took time for the Senate and the Office of the Ombudsman to vacate the Senate building that is now the National Museum of Fine Arts and longer for the tourism department to leave its building, but it turned out for the best because the National Museum had one building to do at one time for its purposes rather than three at the same time.

Now the National Museum has queues of people to see its wonders. It has its own buildings and is a respected and accessible institution. Everyone should know FVR’s role in its present dignified and dynamic status.

When the Concerned Citizens For The National Museum, now renamed Museum Foundation of the Philippines, invited FVR to a gala fundraiser sometime after the first building was completed, he readily came, stood up to give a speech holding a sheaf of papers which he suddenly tossed to the floor saying he preferred to ad lib. That was one of FVR’s old tricks, letting papers of a supposed speech fly off while he spoke off the cuff about the importance of the National Museum. Sometimes, he acted as a clown to make a point and people loved it. In truth, this career military man had a liberal and astute mind that saw what was needed and did something about it in a field that the public would not connect to the military. His example of support for the National Museum was followed by his successors — Estrada, Macapagal-Arroyo and Aquino. But he was the pioneer that brought it to its felicitous turning point.

There should be a plaque in the National Museum telling the world who its hero is. Thank you, FVR, we salute you as the president who gave our National Museum its admirable home.