The Patrimony of All, Ang Panublion sang Tanan: Paintings from the Lopez Museum and Library

The exhibition presents a survey of works from exemplars in Philippine art from the late nineteenth century to the early part of the twentieth. Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Fernando Amorsolo, and Juan Arellano painted what they saw and felt around them but also conversed with what was being imagined elsewhere in the world. Around Academic Realism and Impressionism, they layered their distinct visions of colonial allegory, the native sunlight, and the dreamwork of the primeval and the future. 

Alongside this survey are themes that discuss how the medium of Western-style painting played out in the Philippines and how the artists invested it with local material and sentiment. This locality was at once rooted and worldly.

In this rhythm between survey and theme, a Philippine context begins to take shape and finally figure. This context is ecological, historical, and cultural but is rendered decisively artistic. To a great extent, this story is also the story of the modern, how art and artists critically reflect on the social atmosphere and craft the complex visual language animating a broadly conceived Philippine sensibility. 

Inspired by the words of the quintessential hero Jose Rizal, the exhibition lives by the promise of the Filipino artistic talent being the “patrimony of all.” Rizal exalted Luna and Hidalgo in Madrid in 1884 when both painters were conferred high honors at an international exposition. “Genius knows no country,” Rizal exclaimed; it is the inheritance of everyone, present in nature and the birthright of both people and homeland deserving the fullness of freedom. 

Curatorial text by Dr Patrick Flores