SF War Memorial
 

If you happen to be in the SF Bay Area there is a current PI weaponry exhibit at the War Memorial building on Van Ness St. across from city hall in San Francisco.
I was asked by the curator to help expand the show to run through May, Asian Heritage Month and into Philippine Independence day June 12, so some of my collection is there now.
Worth taking friends and family to see if you're interested in military and Philippine/world history, feature is an old original Katipunan revolutionary flag and artifacts from the Philippine-American War. The captured battle flag has one of the earliest renditions for the art from which the modern PI flag is based. During the turn of the century, San Francisco was the major port of entry and departure for the military from this era and was tied to the history of the PI and US. The SF War Memorial stores a large collection of US military artifacts as well as world arms.

Thank you
 

Mabagani:

Thanks for this info. For those of us who may not get out to SF in the next month, will there be a catalogue available? Any chance you could post some pictures here?

Ian.

No catalogue for this exhibit, but it does serve as a prelude and an excellent venue for subsequent larger showing of PI weaponry. There are ongoing weekly forums dealing with local and martial history within one of the buildings conference rooms held in conjunction with the event. I'll be back on Sat. I'd need to get some of the cases opened to take decent photos without the glare from the glass.
"Mabagani"

Mabagani:

If you can get display cases unlocked, you must have some good connections.;) Is that a privilege for being a contributor to the exhibition?

Ian.

i don't think mabagani means legally... lolz...

all legal...lol, it is a privilege, we have to keep going into each of the cases to add, adjust or align the swords and artifacts, so it only a matter of requesting.
"Mabagani"

Sounds awesome, I hope Ill be able to get the chance to swing by and take view.

I managed to see the exhibit, which, I feel necessary to mention, is not so easy. First I tried going there in the weekend, but it was closed, so I went there today (I was fortunate to be free on a Monday morning). It is supposed to be open on weekdays from 10 AM to 4:30 PM, but when I arrived at 10:30, I had to wait a little more than half an hour before a person finally came and opened the small room.
It was worth it: I was not disappointed. The exhibit is small but interesting and I really liked the fact that it had almost every weapon type from the PI on the diplay (or at least almost every major item, as I am far from an expert) from small daggers, through an Igorot Axe, through Katipunan bolos and swords, to an absolutely huge kampilan and even some Moro armor. Sorry, I did not take pictures, but even if a brought a camera with me it would not have been possible to obtain good pictures as everything except two suits of armor is behind glass. It was nice to see all of these really nice examples of PI weapons, they look much nicer live than on pictures.