UP Baguio (UPB) formally opened its three-story ethnographic museum, Museo Kordilyera, on January 31, seven months after its soft opening in 2016. Its main areas of focus are the collection, preservation, and exhibition of artifacts and other objects unique to the Cordillera region, its peoples, and its cultures and traditions.
Conforming to the campus terrain, only the first story of the museum is at ground level, as with the other campus buildings, while the second and third levels of the museum are underground. These lower levels have: spaces for the Museo Kordilyera’s permanent collection,;curatorial space for ethnographic materials; a temporary exhibition area; a room for the orientation of visitors; an audio-visual room; a shop; and, a café.
Three inaugural exhibits were mounted as part of the event: “Batok Tattoos: Body as Archive”, based on the research of Museo Kordilyera Director Analyn Salvador-Amores, a professor at the UPB Department of Social Anthropology and Psychology ; “Jules de Raedt: Life Works, Lived Worlds”, a retrospective of de Raedt’s work; and, “The Indigenous, In Flux: Reconfiguring the Ethnographic Photograph” by Roland Rabang of the UPB Department of Language, Literature, and the Arts.
Together with Salvador-Amores, also involved in the curatorial work for the inaugural exhibits were: Professor Emeritus Delfin Tolentino, Jr. ot the UPB Department of Language, Literature, and the Arts; Professor Victoria Diaz of the UPB Department of Social Anthropology and Psychology; and, Cristina Villanueva, a UPB archivist.
Museo Kordilyera is now open to the public. ()
