Celebrate the rich diversity of Philippine art with 25 compelling works recently added to the Asian Art Museum’s collection. Expressive indigenous carving, jewelry and textiles; Christian devotional statues from the Spanish colonial period; postwar genre and landscape paintings; and contemporary works come together in this intimate exhibition to tell fascinating and complex stories of the Philippines.
Philippine Art: Collecting Art, Collecting Memories reveals the Philippines’ role as a center of artistic exchange and innovation, where artists with their own indigenous religions and traditions were exposed to new ideas from the trade between China and India. The expansion of Islam to the archipelago, and later the long periods of Spanish and American colonialism, have made the arts of the Philippines unlike any in Asia. Contemporary artists continue to draw and reflect upon these subjects and the legacy of their country’s tumultuous past.
This unprecedented exhibition — one of the first in the United States to present Philippine art from the precolonial period to the present — is the result of more than a decade of study and collecting by the museum’s curatorial team. The museum is pleased to share these new acquisitions, many on view for the first time, with our Bay Area community, which has been so enriched by its residents of Filipino ancestry. Our schedule of related public programs, as well as materials in the exhibition, relate stories from the local Filipino community and invite you to share your own thoughts and memories.
Top image: Central panel of a blanket (kumo), approx. 1950. Philippines; Mindanao, T’boli people. Abaca. Asian Art Museum, Gift of Jack and Milka Wigfield, F2009.31.1. Photograph © Asian Art Museum.
Philippine Art: Collecting Art, Collecting Memories is organized by the Asian Art Museum. Presentation is made possible with the generous support of Dinny Winsor Chase, Consuelo Hall McHugh, Crisanto and Evelyn Raimundo, and Glenn Vinson and Claire Vinson.
Tateuchi Thematic Gallery
