The idea of renovating and restoring the ground floor of the church’s refectory to convert it into a historical mini-museum was one of the major projects of the Betis Town Fiesta Committee 2007. The Committee which was spearheaded by comite de festejo president Florentino Torres saw the need of a specific place which will serve as a an exhibition room where the collections of Betis Church’s artifacts, important historical data, old photographs and memorabilia, antique valuable pieces of the old families of the town and other significant documents pertaining to the celebration of its annual fiestas and traditions in the past and of the present will be showcased. The goal is to ignite awareness, interest and sense of pride among the townspeople especially the new generation Betisenos. After several considerations and consensus among the committee’s member, it was decided that the refectory of the church will be converted into a museum.

The whole refectory which housed several precious art pieces of the church remained undeveloped for several years since its renovation in the early 20th century; after it was accidentally burned down in 1908. Since then, it has become a storage room for baptismal and wedding records of the church and it was where the valuable 17th century relief wood sculpture of “Matamoros” was hanged on one of the brick posts of the ground floor; the two “Sagarado Familia” oil paintings believed to have been painted by Simon Flores Y de la Rosa which are still found on the south-side of the wall at the second floor; the “Monstrance of Santiago de Galicia” and the few remaining mural paintings of the original ceiling painter of Betis, Macario Ligon Y Nulud. Today, through the support and generosity of the Betis people and the burning passion of the whole Committee of 2007 to relive the crowning glory of the past, the ground floor is now transformed into “Museo Ning Betis”.

The renovation of the ground floor took five months to complete. The addition of several interior designs and furniture were actually recycled from a pile of old wood and broken furniture stocked in the refectory’s ground floor. Instead of buying new materials, the committee made use of these debris, some were restored and some were converted into brackets of the wall lamps on every post, the base of the chandeliers, the doors of the façade of the museum’s entrance, the architrave of the arched windows and even a couple of utilitarian tables which are now located at the secretary’s office. The conceived ambience for the whole ground floor was to make it look like the interior of a bahay na bato house.

Today, the collections inside the museum comprised of “Matamoros”(17th Century relief sculpture), “San Jose Macaquera”(Attributed to the Sazon Family), 1800’s original icons of the Betis’ church retablo, a relief sculpture by Juan Flores Y Culala, “Salangsang Ning Ilog Betis” by Victor Ramos Y Gaza, “Madonna at Anac” by Willy Layug Y Tadeo and “Inventario de la Parroqia de Betis”
(an old notebook which gives account to the 1939-1957 inventory of Padre Santiago Blanco(1939) on the renovation of the church).

The consultants in the restoration procedure were Prof. Armando Burgos of the University of the Philippines Diliman and Prof.Regalado Trota Jose of University of the Philippines Diliman. Assistant to Prof. Burgos in the research and documentation process was Prof. Ruston Banal Jr, an alumnus of the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Fine Arts and a native of Betis. The consultant to the interior design was Ms. Imelda S, Torres, proprietress of FurnitureVille Inc.