TO do everything for everybody else and never to expect anything in return is a mark of the truly honorable. For many years, the good people at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (www.metmuseum.ph) have shown a knack for this most precious gift.
So it was a surprise that we heard from the lady at the front desk that Arch. Gerry Torres was now the director at the Met. He was the man responsible for selecting us as a professional lecturer for a younger generation when he was still dean of the School of Design and Arts (SDA) of the College of St. Benilde so many years ago. He was an advocate of a select team that built the modern Ed Calma building of the SDA, now known as “Camp Big Falcon” to students.
Also joyful was a first face-to-face with Cora Alvina, a former director of the Met who is still connected with the museum in every way. We have spoken with Cora over the years, but only through rare telephone conversations about art, social responsibility and volunteerism. Cora embraced us with open arms and extended invitations to all the gallery openings.
Meanwhile, meeting Patrick Flores, Ph.D., for the very first time recalled many instances where his name was mentioned by friends in the art scene, and where we merely nodded as if we knew him. But that is forgivable because his byline has become ubiquitous for constructing various texts whether academic or journalistic. (And you meet the person through the text.) Patrick is an avowed advocate of the democratization of exhibition space, including the inclusion of popular artifacts, away from the formal elitism of past art regimes.
Current sightings on the second floor
THE three form a triumvirate—with Gerry Torres still teaching a class at the SDA and managing the daily requirements of the museum; Cora Alvina giving a helping hand as perhaps a senior of the three; and Patrick Flores lending intellectual weight and curatorial focus, aside from teaching art studies and criticism at the College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines, Diliman, and managing the Vargas Museum of the same university, as its director. Thus with the accumulated expertise, the public can look forward to a warm, yet intelligent, reception whenever they enter through the automatic doors of the Metropolitan Museum, whose collections and exhibits rival its nearest neighbor, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). But that’s understandable since the CCP’s main thrust has always seemingly been the performing arts.
The Metropolitan Museum, however, relies on the art collection of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), whose pieces make up roughly 30 percent of changing exhibitions, as well as the BSP’s endowment for the pre-Hispanic gold collection found at the basement of the fortress-like structure. For the rest of the pieces on view, the museum is thankful to its individual and institutional lenders, including artists, collectors, foundations and other museums.
A contribution to self
PRESENTLY showing at the Upper Galleries of the Met is a 150-piece collection of artifacts, art objects and texts that capture the spirit of portraiture from the 17th-century Philippines to its latest metamorphoses—although it did not tackle the most redundant form of portraiture nowadays found in Internet social networks, namely, the digital profile picture. But that’s okay. The exhibit, titled Bisa: Potent Presences, will run through July 15. The museum is found at the BSP Complex along Roxas Boulevard in Manila, and is open Monday through Saturday (except every first Monday of the month) from 9 am to 6 pm.
Not known to the general public, Bisa is a Philippine response to an international series of exhibitions organized by the Asia-Europe Museums Network under the aegis of the Asia Europe Foundation. The series, titled Self and Other: Portraits from Asia and Europe, originally began at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, with curator Dr. Brian Durrans, an adviser of the British Museum, explaining that the exhibition “outlines the complex history of mutual perception through the medium of visual representations” between Asia and Europe. At the onset, it was contemplated that variations on the theme would be presented in places like London, Stockholm and Manila.
The response of the Met was curated by Flores, whose premise spins from the Filipino word for potency, efficacy, charm, enchantment, specter and prowess that is linked up with our talismanic culture, as well as cognate to the Bahasa Malay word for ability, the possibility of doing.
But for all intents and purposes, we have another spin: Bisa is also the Filipino term for visa, a direct allusion to a Filipino identity that has been exported to the entire world via our overseas labor market and through leisurely travel.
It is through your visa, not your passport, that you will know and be known beyond the seas. Isn’t portraiture and identity an exportation of the self? Or does the self solely reside in the exploration of the eye of the beholder?
A foreigner once quipped: “The Philippines seems like one gigantic airport. Everybody wants to leave the place.” For this you need a bisa. It is highly questionable though if all truly want to leave—you’ll have to exempt some politicians who are profiting from common misery. It seems money-making is the hidden reason behind false patriotism. But the heartstrings of the three aforementioned cultural workers—Torres, Alvina and Flores—go beyond mere lucre. They have been wooed to high-paying jobs abroad, yet they stick to a passion most dear to their hearts. For this, unlike the profiteers, they are the most rewarded.
