Sown by the Traveler

The second exhibition involving the collection of the Lopez Museum and Library to grace the art gallery of the University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo revolves around the theme of women and migrants. It looks into the period in Philippine art history that moves towards modernism beyond the Impressionism of Juan Arellano, who was part of the first exhibition alongside stalwarts of the academic school, Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, and Fernando Amorsolo. 

Titled Sown by the Traveller: Women and Migrants in Philippine Art also moves beyond the exalted patriarchy of Philippine art history and the confines of the nation to focus on women artists such as Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Nena Saguil and migrant artists who worked in different parts of the world such as Fernando Zobel in Spain, Alfonso Ossorio in the United States, and Macario Vitalis and Juvenal Sanso in France. Lifted from the poem of National Hero Jose Rizal "To the Flowers of Heidelberg," the title evokes the desire of Filipinos to fill the world with the patriotic imagination, sourced from the gifts of nature like flowers which know no borders and can bring faraway places together.