After a two-year hiatus, the cultural scene especially in Makati City is again alive with the recent soft opening of the Ayala Museum and Filipinas Heritage. It was also a perfect time as Ayala Museum celebrated its 60th anniversary.
Closed for renovation since June 2019, the management of Ayala Museum and Filipinas Heritage said the soft opening provided a peek of the newly renovated museum and library with five galleries initially accessible to the public with pre booked admissions, timed entries, and limited capacity on admissions.
In response to the pandemic, the management have introduced operational adjustments and safety protocols to ensure guests will feel secured and safe when visiting the museum and and gallery. Moreover, all visitors of the museum and the library, regardless of age, must be fully vaccinated and will have to provide proof of vaccination upon entry for the safety of all visitors and staff.
Re-energized space
The management said the new Ayala Museum will provide a lovely experience to the onsite visitor with new exhibition, event, and retail spaces. To ensure it will provide a distinct Asian design suited to Philippine culture, Ayala Museum tapped Leandro V. Locsin Partners (LVLP) for a marvelous aesthetic and at the same time with great functionality by integrating it closer to the Greenbelt complex and its environs. The resulting outside-inside atmosphere is a wise pandemic response alongside plans to ensure the museum is a safe zone, defined by physical distancing and safety from the transmission of disease.
A fountain of stories
Five new exhibitions were introduced along with the new Ayala Museum website and the upcoming Ayala Museum app. The management ensured all these new features guarantee a fountain of stories that will provoke curiosity and move people about what is uniquely Filipino.
To give tribute to the to this year’s quincentennial celebration of the circumnavigation of the world, the exhibition “Intertwined: Transpacific, Transcultural Philippines” was shown highlighting entangled cultures brought about by man’s ability to circumnavigate the world with over 240 carefully curated objects and artworks. A new dedicated gallery in honor of artist Fernando Zobel who envisioned Ayala Museum will be unveiled with the exhibition “Landscape into Painting: Fernando Zobel Serie Blanca”. As an art and history museum, the Orientations Gallery conveys, with a display of tangible objects from the Ayala Museum collections, the wealth and diversity that abound in the cultures and peoples throughout the islands and the nation’s past.
Ayala Museum was also a trailblazer in the country with the launching of the Digital Gallery located in the museum’s new lobby. Made up of eight sprawling screens, the gallery enables visitors to digitally explore objects from the museum and library collections and engage in interactive and up-close conversations with art and history for free.
The rest of the Ayala Museum galleries will open by the first half of 2022.
Going Omnichannel
Ayala Museum and Filipinas Heritage are on a mission to broaden the appeal of art and culture by making it more accessible. It has adopted the omnichannel approach. Omnichannel is a term derived from retail to describe a visitor-centric approach to ensure customers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it.
Going omnichannel was originally hatched before the pre-pandemic. Nevertheless, the timing was right as people have been used to watching through the digital platform. In response, everything in the newly renovated Ayala Museum will be networked, multiple channels digitally connected so one can move seamlessly between them, enabling Filipinos here and abroad to readily access Philippine art and culture 24/7, as exemplified by the collections and programming of the museum and library.
Onsite exhibitions will be supported by exclusive content that enriches the viewer’s understanding through the upcoming Ayala Museum app.