NOT all is bad and mean and boring this month of February.

Outside of the impeachment spectacle going on in the Senate, which seems to reveal that indeed lawyering requires merely good logic and a good sense of the English language—and of course, a license—there are many good acts for the sake of arts.

“Yer henerr,” to borrow the sounds of Cuevas, art indeed can save us from the rut of politics and the injustice of what we call our justice system if we only look around and participate in events of the arts.

At the University of the Philippines, the Vargas Museum, vastly unheralded and greatly underrated, is celebrating its 25th year with a firework of exhibition and education programs. The museum itself has a historical beginning, with Jorge B. Vargas, the Philippines’ First Executive Secretary, donating on March 1, 1978 his collections, which was composed of art pieces, stamps and coins, library and archives to UP. It was in UP that Vargas studied.

What is now known as the Vargas Art Collection includes works by Filipino artists from the late 19th century, the American and Japanese occupation, down to those done in the postwar years.

While the donations were done years back, the Vargas Museum itself was formally opened on February 22, 1987. The museum engages itself with the academic disciplines in the university, particularly the Art Studies at UP.

The Vargas Museum will initiate the commemoration of its 25 years by way of the “Art History Series”. The program is aimed at encouraging further study of the Vargas Collection.

The series will begin in May with a thematic approach, which dwells on the notion of the “picturesque” in visual culture. The release from the museum states that through this approach, the program “will re-examine ideals of beauty and expressions of nostalgia in portraiture and landscape paintings, as well as images in popular culture.”

The second approach is called “monographic approach,” which will focus on the lives and works of artists. This program will explore the careers in painting and the graphic arts of Pablo Amorsolo and Pedro Coniconde, two artists whose works are well represented in the Vargas Collection.

The series will be rounded out by the diachronic approach, focusing on the milieu of the Philippine Commonwealth government from 1934 to 1941. Defined as historical, this series aims to bridge the gap between curatorship and art history.

The launch of the Art History Series will be followed by the opening of “Visible Storage” in June. The reference to storage here refers to the material component of the Vargas art collection, which covers some 500 works. According to the museum, Visible Storage will allow qualified researchers and specialists to undertake an in-depth study of the collection. Given the volume of the art pieces, a fraction of the collection can be viewed as part of the permanent exhibition at the second floor of the Main Gallery of the museum.

Another program, “Track Changes”, is a para-site exhibition program at the Main Gallery that aims to link the art collection and the archives. Under this program is the initial exhibition, The Native Strain: Guillermo Tolentino and Aurelio Alvero. This exhibition will examine and look into the nativist disposition of the sculptor Tolentino and the curator-poet Alvero who went by the nom de plume Magtanggul Asa and helped Vargas form his collection. This program is scheduled to open in June.

Museums are really schools by themselves. The Vargas Museum has crafted education modules. Under this is the activity for the publication of The Vargas Collection Study Guide. The guide addresses school students in grade school, high school, and college levels. It links discussion topics and activities on The Vargas Collection exhibit to the national curriculum prescribed by the Department of Education. Last year, a discussion among art educators and specialists was held at the Vargas Museum to assess the potential of the program. Participants of this forum included representatives from Museo Pambata, Philippine Art Educators Association (PAEA), UP Integrated School, Ateneo de Manila High School, Balara Elementary School, to mention just some of the participants.

In another setting, a literary and film festival is happening by way of the Instituto Cervantes de Manila. A forum was set on February 2, exploring the life and journey of one of the major literary figures of 20th century Spain as Instituto Cervantes de Manila features an exhibit on Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910-1999).

 Titled Los Mundos de Gonzalo Torrente (The Worlds of Gonzalo Torrente), this exhibition presents a snapshot of the renowned Spanish writer and highlights a selection of photographs documenting his life and his unique way of using photography as a work tool for his creative process.

The exhibit opening today, Thursday, also includes a round table discussion entitled “The World in a Novel” featuring Spanish scholar Carmen Becerra, Torrente Ballester’s son Alvaro and Filipino writer and publisher Ramon Sunico. It starts 4 pm at Instituto Cervantes’ Salon de Actos.

Torrente Ballester was born in Galicia, Spain, and received his first education there.

Following several problems with Spanish government censors under Franco and disappointment by the indifferent reception to his novel Don Juan (1963), he decided to leave his country and accepted a post at the University at Albany in 1966 and remained there until 1973 as the university’s first distinguished professor.

Two years later, the novelist was elected member of the Spanish Royal Academy. In 1985, Torrente Ballester was the first Spanish novelist to receive the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the highest Spanish literary prize.

 Los Mundos de Gonzalo Torrente is organized by Instituto Cervantes de Manila in collaboration with the Spanish Embassy in the Philippines , Fundación Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Acción Cultural Española, and Spanish Agency International Cooperation for Development (AECID).

Another event at Instituto Cervantes is the launching of the cultural magazine Perro Berde, which is the only publication of Philippine culture in Spanish. On its third issue, the magazine was initiated by a group of Filipino and Spanish writers residing in Manila. It presents “a venue for interaction among Filipino and Spanish and Latin American writers, an opportunity for cultural exchange.”

***Instituto Cervantes de Manila is at 855 T.M. Kalaw Street, Ermita, Manila.