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Resolution for 2012: Visit museums regularly. Drag your friends. Get away from the crowds at the shopping malls. Give your brains something to process besides clothes and price tags. The malls aren’t going anywhere, more are being built every day, but the museums are struggling and they won’t survive your indifference. (Doesn’t that make you feel important, the thought that something will die without you?)

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Our first museum for the year: the Metropolitan Museum of Manila at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas complex on Roxas Boulevard.

What to see at the Met:

1. The Suite Vollard by Pablo Picasso.

Pablo Picasso. Rembrandt and Woman with a Veil. Fundacion MAPRE’s Collections. Copyright Sucesion Pablo Picasso. VEGAP. Madrid, 2011.

100 etchings produced by the artist between 1930 and 1937, commissioned by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The Suite Vollard from the Fundacion MAPFRE Collection is one of the few complete sets in existence. Minotaurs, models, circus performers, lovers, order and chaos within the same frame. Essential for anyone with the slightest interest in modern art.

A reminder that before you can experiment, you have to have the skills; before you can be a revolutionary, you have to understand what you’re taking apart. Don’t give us that “I don’t care about tradition” crap, it’s just another way of saying “I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag.”

The exhibition is made possible by Fundacion MAPFRE and Fundacion Santiago. It closes on Saturday, 7 January 2012, so you have 3 days to see it. The Met is open from 9am to 6pm.

The British Museum recently acquired a complete set of the Suite Vollard; it will go on display in May 2012. So you can see the etchings before your friends in England do.

2. Foto a foto. A Portrait of Spain.

Photograph by Ramon Masats, Madrid, 1960. What a shot. What a shot.

Fifteen Spanish photographers depict the evolution of Spanish cities from the 1950s to the present. Presented by Accion Cultural Espanola and the Spanish Embassy on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Jose Rizal.

Photograph by Francesc Catala-Roca.

3. Conscripcion, documents and maps from the National Archives showing how the colonial world produces documents, and documents produce the colonial world.

The exhibit features the Basi Revolt paintings by the 19th century artist Esteban Villanueva. The Basi Revolt broke out in Piddig, Ilocos Norte in 1807 when the Spanish authorities banned the private manufacture of basi, an alcoholic beverage made of fermented sugarcane. You do not come between the citizens and their drinks.

4. Hidalgo: The Colonial Subject as Master

Charon’s Boat.

The Christian Virgins Being Exposed to the Populace.

The major paintings of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.

5. The permanent exhibition of Pre-Colonial Gold and Pottery in the basement.

We hadn’t been in the basement since our grade school field trips. The Met was always on the itinerary, along with the Manila Aquarium, a doll museum that no longer exists, the Magnolia ice cream plant, and the Manila Zoo, where there was the thrilling possibility that the gorilla would throw a banana peel at someone.

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How to get to the Met: Go straight down Edsa and turn right on Roxas Boulevard. Or take the LRT to Vito Cruz and walk the rest of the way, or hop on the orange shuttle to the CCP Complex.

Price of admission: P100, less than the price of the fast food burgers we have decided to shun this year. (No fast food in 2012. We don’t love them, why should we consume them?)

Thanks to Metropolitan Museum of Manila director Gerry Torres for the tour and to his staff for the photos. Photography is not allowed at the museum. The preservation of the artifacts is somewhat more important than your need to post pictures of yourself online.