Lopez Museum: Here and there

Column: Life
Author: Jon Hernandez III, Contributor

On its 50th anniversary, the Lopez Museum flaunts anew its extensive collections of the past masters alongside those works of Gaston Damag, Antipas Delotavo, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya and Keith Sicat at the museum’s premises in Pasig City until September.

The recent launching of the book Unfolding Half a Century at Rockwell Tent drew emphasis anew on the Lopez Museum’s treasures, which first included 36 Juan Lunas and 182 Felix Resurrection Hidalgos in 1960 from the collection of late Lopez Group founder Eugenio Lopez Sr.

As the Lopez Museum and Library’s past is all secured, it is expanding beyond modern and contemporary pieces.

The After the Fact exhibit mainly focuses on two artists loosely associated with Philippine social realism. They are Antipas Delotavo (Nature of the Beast) and feminist Imelda Cajipe-Endaya (Musmos and Tarana).

Alongside the works of Delotavo and Endaya are multimedia interventions from Keith Sicat (Cinemosaic) and Gaston Damag (Rin-Nawan).

As the Lopez Museum is not only deemed not only as repository of history (Its library currently counts over 19,000 Filipiniana titles by 12,000 authors, rare books, maps, manuscripts and literary works), the place also in another breath as all-encompassing and separate view of Philippine culture and how it have moved forward.

Parellel to this, the Lopez Museum also recently had an exhibit called “Threads: The Museum as Site for the Weaving of Tales” at the Rockwell Power Plant Mall North Court.

Threads featured contemporary artists Leo Abaya, Myra Beltran, Jef Carnay, Kiri Dalena, Ann Tiukinhoy Pamintuan, Claro Ramirez, Jean Marie Syjuco and Ann Wizer worked on the theme regarding their personal view of a museum to characterize what museums as sites of remembrance and narrative-making.

This was drawn from a UP College of Fine Arts exercise called “Paintings Come Alive” as the Lopez Museum engage a mix of individuals to “cosplay” characters found in iconic works from the Lopez Museum collection.

Examples of these are Myra Beltran’s performance of Mi Ultimo Adios, a 6 to 7 minute excerpt from Itim Asu: 1719-2009, a modern ballet that “references Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo’s El Asasinato del Gobernador Bustamante y su hijo, the anti-clerical flavor of El Fil, and the agential power of artists.”

Jef Carnay’s Tipped and Empty Pockets depict the character in Danilo Dalena’s Jai Alai series, Talo, while Jean Marie Syjuco’s Where are we now?... Where do we go from here…? “metamorphoses the two female figures in Juan Luna’s Espana y Filipinas into Barbies.”

Also notable was Ann Wizer’s Extra ORDINARY that combined found objects made out of trash woven into tapestry and garments coupled with sound elements. It takes off from Jose Tence Ruiz’s Topless Victorian.

Source: The Daily Tribune

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