Taguig’s Mind Museum offers fun tour from cells to space

The Mind Museum, Taguig City PDI PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Before a boulder-sized installation, a wide-eyed Cherilyn Javellana toyed curiously with a contraption that showed, in colorful animation, the different parts of a cell.

“I’ve been here for a only few minutes and I’ve learned a lot already,” said Javellana, a fifth grader from CP Sta. Teresa Elementary School in Taguig, one of the students who were treated to a tour of The Mind Museum of Taguig (TMMT) at Bonifacio Global City Wednesday.

The P1-billion TMMT held a dry run on Wednesday to fine-tune its operations for its public launch next month.

Among the local officials who were given an early peek into the interactive galleries were Mayor Ma. Laarni Cayetano.

Designed by architect Ed Calma, the two-level, 6,000-square-meter museum offers a walk-through learning experience on the wonders of science and technology.

One installation, for example, entices visitors to turn a steel ring to convert mechanical energy to electrical energy, which in turn heats up a set of battery cells. The energy generated by the batteries then lights up a display explaining the whole conversion process.

Other major displays deal with the solar system, the history of the Space Race, and the age of the dinosaurs, among others.

A guided tour would take about an hour. Admission is at P600 each for adults, P450 for students in private schools, and P150 for those in public schools.

The museum’s team of tour guides—to be called “Mind Movers”—would be composed of honor students from various colleges and universities, according to TMMT curator Maria Isabel Garcia.

Garcia also proudly noted that 95 percent of the exhibition pieces were designed and created by Filipino scientists and artists.

She conceded that it was not always that easy to make a scientist and an artist work together on a piece, “but now all you see here is the outcome of such collaborations.”

“Whenever our donors come here, they always say that the structure is much better than the artist’s rendition,” she said.

The museum is operated by the Bonifacio Arts Foundation Inc.