The Lopez Museum was founded on 13 February 1960 by Eugenio Lopez, Sr in honor of his parents, Benito Lopez and Presentacion Hofileña. Eugenio Lopez built the museum to provide scholars and students access to his personal collection of rare Filipiniana books, manuscripts, maps, archaeological artifacts and fine art.
Eugenio Lopez is known to many as a leading industrialist of post-World War II Philippines. With resources that came from sugar production, he pioneered in diverse fields of business including transportation (bus, taxicab and air transport operations), mass media (ABS-CBN Corporation and The Manila Chronicle), energy (MERALCO) becoming one of the first Filipino successes in business in a then largely American dominated economy.
A staunch nationalist, Eugenio Lopez believed that by preserving and promoting the Filipino heritage, his country men would eventually develop sense of national pride and enable the country to develop a unified spirit ultimately resulting in ensuring a strengthening of a collective national soul in the succeeding generations.
He died in July 1975 in San Francisco, California, United States, where he had lived in self-imposed exile since 1972, away from the oppression of martial law. He had led a full life as a leading industrialist and a media magnate, leaving behind him a legacy for the Filipino people.
The art collection
As is the story for most museums built from a core of personal acquisitions, the Lopez Museum collection is an amalgam of objects reflecting the overt as well as latent idiosyncrasies of each of its curators and directors. Apart from constituting a seminal contribution to extant Philippine heritage, the Lopez Museum collection stands as one of the oldest, publicly accessible private art collections in the country.
Eminent historian Renato Constantino was Lopez Museum's first curator, from 1960 to 1972. Engaged by LMM founder and prominent antiquarian Eugenio Lopez, Sr (Eñing), it was only logical that it would be under his watch that the museum acquired Juan Luna's España y Filipinas, a seminal work much cited for capturing the image of a country patronizingly led up the rungs of evolutionary colonial tutelage. Such acquisitions complemented the Philippine rare books and antiquarian map collection amassed by Eñing, who in consultation with renowned collector and connoisseur Alfonso Ongpin, further acquired other seminal and technically astute works by Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, and Fernando Amorsolo. A second key acquisition phase was led by Eñing's youngest son, Roberto Lopez who was inclined toward Philippine Modernism, thus improving this aspect of the LMM collection with works vetted under the supervision of art historian, Rod Paras Perez.
An even more pronounced and art historically-sensitive acquisition program was adopted under the term of Eugenio Lopez, Jr who was at the helm of LMM from 1993 to 1999. Lopez, Jr worked alongside a sharp professional complement made up of Mariles Ebro Matias, Joselina Cruz, and Maita Reyes who collaboratively elevated LMM's museum education, curatorial, and conservation programs unto previously unreached heights. It was during these successive phases that key works of national artists (Carlos Francisco, Napoleon Abueva, Hernando Ocampo, Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi, Victorio Edades, Jeremias Elizalde Navarro, Arturo Luz, Jose Joya, Ang Kiukok, Benedicto Cabrera) as well as the works of younger, emergent voices further layered the discursive potential of LMM's visual art trove. The current leadership, under Oscar Lopez and Director Mercedes Vargas, intends to keep its library and art collection holdings current and significant, while keeping abreast with international museum standards relevant to contemporary exhibition discourse, heritage conservation, extension, and outreach.
Expectedly, the character of the Lopez Museum collection has cumulatively morphed with the institution's shifting concerns. Presently, one of the major challenges confronting LMM is the need to continually showcase segments of its permanent collection alongside contemporary Filipino creative expression couched within the frames of increasing interdisciplinarity and merging communication platforms. It is in this light that curation brings the possibility of infusing context and sub-text to an otherwise private quest for personal roots and a shared locus for nationalist heritage.
The library collection: 600 years of history
Consisting of over 19,000 Filipiniana titles by about 12,000 authors, the Lopez Library houses an invaluable collection of Philippine incunabula, rare books, manuscripts, dictionaries, literary works in Western and vernacular languages, religious tracts, periodicals, newspapers, coffee table volumes, academic treatises, contemporary writing, maps, archival photographs, cartoons and microfilms. It remains a critical node in the small network of institutions devoted to ongoing Philippine scholarship produced locally and internationally.
Among its more important holdings are 21 rare titles of Philippine imprints dated from 1597 to 1800, 69 key titles from the 18th century, and 777 titles from the 19th century. The library's rare books and manuscripts include those of eminent printers, Tomas Pinpin, Raymundo Magysa, Nicolas Bagay, Laureano Atlas, and Juan Correa. The library is home to the first edition of Belarmin-Lopez's Doctrina Cristiana (Manila 1620) translated into Ilocano (Libro a naisuratan amin ti bagas), Pedro Chirino's Relacion de las Islas Filipinas, as well as key editions of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Jose Rizal's 1890 edition, Blair and Robertson's 1904 edition, and W. E. Retana's 1909 edition).
In addition to a huge aggregate of secondary works on the National Hero, Dr Jose Rizal authored by both Filipino and Western authors, the Lopez Library also serves as steward to 93 of Rizal's letters to his parents, sisters, brother and brothers-in-law, among other objects which constitute the most priceless items in LMM's Rizaliana collection.
Among other items worthy of note are a variety of dictionaries, grammar books, and LMM's collection of devotional literature: sermons, novenas, accounts of the lives of saints that were used as tools in the propagation of Roman Catholicism during the Spanish colonial period. Equally important and indispensable are such primary sources as the manuscripts and personal papers of individuals such as Pablo Pastells, Gaspar de San Agustín, Eulogio Despujol, H. L. Legarda, Manuel Sastron y Piñol, and Justo Zaragosa.
Microfilm copies of the Philippine Revolutionary papers, commonly known as the Philippine Insurgent Records, American Consular Reports (1817–1898) from the National Archives, Washington, DC, United States. and several reels of the British Consular Reports, circa 1844–1898, together with the H. H. Bartlett collection from the American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, are among the significant additions to the library's growing microfilm collection which also includes the Tribune (1925–1945), Manila Chronicle (1945–1972), Harpers Weekly, and other key periodicals which are already accessible through digitized versions.
LMM's deep archive of photographs includes a substantial collection of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, early years of the American regime, the Commonwealth era, the post-independence period, up to Martial Law. Other more recent additions that may be of interest to both researchers and casual readers are dissertations on the Philippines submitted to various universities and colleges in the United States (in xerographic and acid free reprints from the University Microfilm, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA). These dissertations cover the period of 1958–1997.
LVN memorabilia
On July 27, 2008, rare LVN memorabilia were donated to the Lopez Museum by the heirs of Doña Narcisa Buencamino vda. De Leon, represented by Narcisa L. Escaler and Nieva Paz L. Eraña. LVN's name was coined, in 1938, from the first letters of the owners’ names: De Leon, Carmen Villongco and Eleuterio Navoa Jr. De Leon, known as Doña Sisang who became president after buying out the inactive partner-families.[1]
Digitization project: Preserving the library collections
One of two parallel and collaborative programs (the other being Conservation) that is envisioned to preserve and promote the Library collection, the Digitization Project aims to accomplish the following:
capture, catalogue and store images of original materials
make these images searchable/accessible/retrievable for a greater range of users
protect and preserve the originals by reducing handling, and
contribute to making the operation of the Library cost-efficient
Exhibition program
Since its inception in the 1960s, the Lopez Museum has primarily been identified as a key viewing venue for important works by Spanish colonial period painters Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. However, with the museum's transition to Pasig and a deliberate shift to more dynamic acquisition and exhibition programs, LMM spatially reconfigured its galleries and adjunct exhibition spaces to showcase key objects from the permanent collection alongside other newer, acquired pieces such as those by national artists Francisco, Manansala, Ocampo, Legaspi, Edades, Luz, et al. and commissioned installations and contemporary artifacts such as films, TV clips, video, and other multimedia work.
Beginning in 2001, LMM instilled a semi-annual changing exhibit program in an effort to practice prudent resource use as well as infuse its exhibitions with a less-static character. This tactical shift sought to balance attention to interpreting segments of the permanent collection alongside exploring intersections in contemporary as well as pop-inflected artistic expression through curatorial intervention and the instigation of artists’ projects. LMM's exhibitions have included:
Fixation: Notions of Obsession brought a selection of LMM's pieces in conversation with the object troves and installations of Raymond Red, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Ikoy Ricio, and Alice & Lucinda;
Projections: Maps, directions & sites, distortions, charts, detours, rumblings & ramblings, a seminal examination of the LMM map collection amidst territorial investigations in the works of Lordy Rodriguez, Mafe Baluyos, Erwin Leaño, and Lena Cobangbang;
Grave Findings: A Reclamation Project allowed Maria Taniguchi to mimic and re-stage the excavations done in Calatagan, Batangas the site from which pre-colonial funerary furniture now ensconced in the LMM collection was originally drawn;
Juan Arellano: Drawing Space was a modest survey of paintings and drawings by the renowned American colonial period architect and re-invested with a contemporary re-reading in a multimedia installation by Datu Arellano;
Babble, Bauble: Tweaking Femme was a visual attempt to look at female representation in images from LMM's art collection, contemporary film and television; and he concluded Fuzzy Logic: Art and Technology, which was an examination of the ambivalent relationships of thread art and science in the cross-generational practice of Kidlat Tahimik, Santiago Bose, Charlie Co, Yason Banal, Louie Cordero, Alfred Villaruel, Wire Tuazon, among others as juxtaposed against LMM pieces by Navarro, Roberto Chabet, Ray Albano, Galo and Hernando Ocampo, Alfonso A. Ossorio, etc.
This current exhibition tract has thus far allowed the museum to attempt at tentative but less canonical and perhaps necessary re-consideration of the bodies of work of artists it has had a hand in validating through its collections. It has likewise created opportunities for LMM to interrogate its own museological track amidst the parallel practices of other institutions it works alongside with or to which it serves as de facto counterpoints to.
The Sum of its Parts shows its heritage of unique expertise in conservation and acquisition in the collections or works by Hidalgo, Luna, Pacita Abad, Nena Saguil, Juvenal Sanso, Claudio Bravo, and contemporary artist Jonathan Olazo's installation work (taking off from his father, Romulo Olazo, known for his 1960s "Diaphanous Series": graphic art medium of printmaking).[2]
Keeping the Faith: Acts of Mediation featured contemporary artist Kiri Dalena, filmmakers Egay Navarro and Rica Concepcion, and sculptor Agnes Arellano showed their works respectively, alongside works of 19th century masters Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, national artists Vicente Manansala, J Elizalde Navarro, Benedicto Cabrera, and artists such as Jose Tence Ruiz and Danilo Dalena. Dalena's installation "Barricade, book of slogans, erased slogans, and isolation room" referenced images from the Lopez library archive of materials from the martial law period. The show also presents Navarro and Concepcion's documentary on the late Baguio artist Roberto Villanueva as well as Arellano's sculptural work "Angel of Death and Bronze Bullets." Curated by husband and wife team of Claro and Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, the exhibit explores the notions of access across the registers of time and place. Eileen said, "As you come and see this exhibition, you would come away with a sense of how we've tried to negotiate the Bridges theme in terms of how, as human beings, we constantly have to deal with being made to stay put or move on literally and metaphorically ... Every exhibition here at Lopez opens up to us the privilege of engaging with contemporary artists who we strongly feel can bring into the museum new ideas and voices that challenge us to re-think and re-evaluate our intentions and museological practices." The exhibit was part of the annual project Zero In, undertaken by a consortium of private museums composed of Ateneo Art Gallery, Ayala Museum, Bahay Tsinoy, Lopez Museum and Museo Pambata.
Education and publications programs
Apart from tending to its intrinsic stewardship function as a heritage institution, Lopez Museum has also consistently been proactive in the area of audience development. Thus, the museum has also been the site of a wide diversity of workshop offerings and thought-provoking public talks and roundtable conversations carried out alongside its archival and exhibition services. Over the past six years, LMM has invited exhibiting artists, critics, curators, cultural workers, as well as other cross-disciplinary academics and scholars to engage with the museum's menu of curatorial and outreach talking points which touch on a range encompassing psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology, the natural and physical sciences, to more emergent fields of discourse such as new media studies and pop culture. These events have allowed museum visitors and researchers to encounter first-hand such individuals as Ambeth Ocampo, Benedicto Cabrera, Cid Reyes, Patrick Flores, Kidlat Tahimik, among many others.
Students and lovers of geography, history, politics, art and education will delight in Lopez Memorial Museum's exhibits showcasing rare maps in one and school texts in the other. Maps are not just physical but charged political delimitations of territory in the exhibit Tutelage at the Library. The exhibit Double Take at the main gallery, features works from the museum's permanent collection, LVN archival photographs and a video installation by featured artist, director Raya Martin.
Also as an explicit demonstration of its commitment to scholarship are the slew of publications that have seen print under LMM's initiative. These include: The Philippine Insurrection Against the US edited by Renato Constantino, Juan Luna: The Filipino Painter by Santiago A. Pilar, Orchidiana Philippiniana by Helen Valmayor, Philippine Rariora by Mauro Garcia, Manansala Nudes and Fernando Zobel by Rod Paras-Perez. Its most recent releases are Locus: Interventions in Art Practice (co-published through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Pananaw ng Sining Bayan, Inc.) and LMM's contribution to the Philippine Centennial, Hidalgo and the Generation of 1872 by Alfredo Roces.
Throughout the years, LMM has also hosted continuing education classes in allied disciplines such as creative writing, book binding, book repair, drawing, cartooning, textile crafts among others. Several workshops catering to the museum professional have also been given and this include disaster preparedness and docent trainings
Institutional collaborations
With the aim of further broadening its audience reach and deepening its network partnerships, Lopez Museum has helped initiate a consortium of cultural institutions called Zero-in (with the Ayala Museum, and the Ateneo Art Gallery as original members). Since expanding to include Museo Pambata and Bahay Tsinoy, the Zero-in consortium has come together annually to mount a multi-venue series of exhibitions that allow these institutions to explore avenues for potential synergy visà-vis their collections and interesting technical expertise. Now into its sixth year, Zero-in has launched outreach programs to public school teachers and students, and facilitated ongoing and past loans and projects among its member institutions. Lopez Museum has also partnered up in varying degrees with such institutions as the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Japan Foundation, Casa Asia, the Museum Foundation of the Philippines, Metrobank Foundation, Prince Klaus Foundation, and CollAsia 2010.
The future: New media
Any learning institution in this age of information overloading faces the daunting task of keeping a largely distracted audience keyed into how the past and present converge, that is, without getting pulled into all sorts of unsustainable tracts. Now practically half-a-century old, the Lopez Museum finds itself precisely at that precarious perch, of having to run a tight ship amidst a rapidly changing communications technology landscape.
Lopez Museum “is a very traditional institution, but what I wanted to do was to explore ways to use new media and more visual learning. I also wanted to make the Museum more visible in all our network’s platforms—TV, radio and glossies (magazines)”, Director Vargas relates.
The Museum under Vargas is keenly aware of its need to engage its target publics not only in terms of developing critical reader-visitors but in making museums a more likely destination among those seeking time-worthy pursuits. She elaborates: “we’re not a museum-going public. People are more concerned with survival, with basic needs. The sad part is that the Filipino is so artistic—we have such a rich and varied culture but it does not take precedence because (so many) are below the poverty level. So, one of my goals is to promote museum awareness among the younger generation.”
As it passes into another half-century of further nurturing a new contingent of driven museum workers and crafters of culture, Lopez Museum looks forward to how it can dynamically play a role in taking stock of past and current intellectual production and giving this back to those who can make best sense of it in the everyday life of the present Filipino.
Juan Luna de San Pedro y Novicio Ancheta, better known as Juan Luna, was a Filipino painter, sculptor and a political activist of the Philippine Revolution during the late 19th century. He became one of the first recognized Philippine artists.
The Ayala Museum is a museum in Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines. It is located in Ayala Center adjacent to Greenbelt mall and is run privately by the Ayala Foundation. This six-storey edifice houses ethnographic and archaeological exhibits on Filipino culture, art, and history. Since its establishment in 1967, the museum has been committed to showcasing overseas collections and situating contemporary Philippine art in the global arena in a two-way highway of mutual cooperation and exchange with local and international associates.
Félix Resurrección Hidalgo y Padilla was a Filipino artist. He is acknowledged as one of the great Filipino painters of the late 19th century, and is significant in Philippine history for having been an acquaintance and inspiration for members of the Philippine reform movement which included José Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Mariano Ponce and Graciano López Jaena, although he neither involved himself directly in that movement, nor later associate himself with the First Philippine Republic under Emilio Aguinaldo.
Vicente Silva Manansala was a Filipino cubist painter and illustrator.
Eugenio López Alonso the sole heir to the Jumex fruit-juice fortune, is the President of Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo and a contemporary art collector.
Eugenio Moreno López Jr., popularly known as Geny López, was the chairman emeritus of ABS-CBN Corporation from 1997 to 1999. He was known within the López Group of Companies as "Kapitán". His great-grandfather Eugenio J. López (1839-1906) was known as "Kapitán Eugenio" during his time.
Ambeth R. Ocampo is a Filipino historian best known for his writings about Philippines' national hero José Rizal and for Looking Back, his bi-weekly editorial page column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He served as the chairman of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (2002–2011) and concurrently chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts in (2005–2007).
Cesar Torrente Legaspi was a Filipino National Artist in painting. He was also an art director prior to going full-time in his visual art practice in the 1960s. His early (1940s–1960s) works, alongside those of peer, Hernando Ocampo are described as depictions of anguish and dehumanization of beggars and laborers in the city. These include Man and Woman and Gadgets. Primarily because of this early period, critics have further cited Legaspi's having "reconstituted" in his paintings "cubism's unfeeling, geometric ordering of figures into a social expressionism rendered by interacting forms filled with rhythmic movement".
The National Museum of the Philippines is an umbrella government organization that oversees a number of national museums in the Philippines including ethnographic, anthropological, archaeological and visual arts collections. Since 1998, the National Museum has been the regulatory and enforcement agency of the Government of the Philippines in the restoring and safeguarding of important cultural properties, sites, and reservations throughout the Philippines.
Don Fabián de la Rosa y Cueto was a Filipino painter. He was the uncle and mentor to the Philippines' national artist in painting, Fernando Amorsolo, and to his brother Pablo. He is regarded as a "master of genre" in Philippine art.
Fernando Zóbel y Montojo, also known as Fernando M. Zóbel, was a Spanish Filipino painter, businessman, art collector and museum founder.
The Ateneo Art Gallery is a museum of modern art of the Ateneo de Manila University. It is the first of its kind in the Philippines. It serves as an art resource for the university community and the general public as well. The Gallery is located at the Arts Wing, Areté, Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City.
España y Filipinas, meaning “Spain and the Philippines” in translation, is an 1886 oil on wood by Filipino painter, ilustrado, and revolutionary activist, Juan Luna. It is an allegorical depiction of two women together, one a representation of Spain and the other of the Philippines. The painting, also known as España Guiando a Filipinas, is regarded as one of the “enduring pieces of legacy” that the Filipinos inherited from Luna. The painting is a centerpiece art at the Luna Hall of the Lopez Memorial Museum.
The Blood Compact is an 1886 “historic and historical' painting by Filipino painter Juan Luna.
The Parisian Life, also known as Interior d'un Cafi, is an 1892 oil on canvas impressionist painting by Filipino painter and revolutionary activist Juan Luna. The painting presently owned by the Government Service Insurance System is currently exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts after the state pension fund transferred management of its collection to the National Museum in March 2012.
Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho or The Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace is a famous 1884 history painting by Filipino painter, reformist, and propagandist Félix Resurrección Hidalgo. The painting is alternately known as The Christian Virgins Exposed to the Rabble, Jovenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho, Christian Virgins Presented to the Populace, The Christian Virgins Being Exposed to the Populace, and Christian Virgins Exposed to the Mob.
La barca de Aqueronte, translated in English as The Boat of Charon or Charon's Boat, is an 1887 oil on canvas and allegorical painting by award-winning Filipino painter Félix Resurrección Hidalgo. The work was a gold medalist during the Exposicion General de las Filipinas in Madrid. In 1889, an international jury made the painting a silver medalist during the Paris Exposition, a distinct recognition that no other Filipino painter had achieved at the major art arena in Paris. The painting also won other awards such as a diploma of honor from the 1891 Exposicion General de Bellas Artes in Barcelona, a gold medal prize at the 1893 Madrid Exposicion Internacional de Bellas Artes during the 400th Anniversary of the Discovery of the Americas. The Government of Spain bought the work of art through a royal decree for the amount of 7,500 pesetas on March 7, 1893. After displaying the artwork at the Museo-Biblioteca de Ultramar and at the Museo de Arte Moderno., La barca de Aqueronte is currently placed at Madrid’s Museo Nacional de Pintura, after the Philippines became a United States territory in 1898. A smaller study of the same painting in the collection of the Lopez Museum in the Philippines.
Eugenio Hofileña López Sr., also known as Eñing López and Don Eugenio, was a leading figure in the Philippines. He was founder of the Lopez Group of Companies. He belonged to the prominent López family of Iloilo, one of the leading political families in the Philippines.
The Tanghalang Pambansa, formerly Theater of Performing Arts, is a theater located in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex in Manila, Philippines.
Kiri Dalena is a visual artist, filmmaker and human rights activist who lives and works in the Philippines. Her work deals with issues of political and social injustice, drawing from events in Philippine history. She is a co-founder of the film making collective Southern Tagalog Exposure.
Italics denote buildings under construction or planned.
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