Conference paper, Saturday, October 20th, 2007, 10:00 a.m.
Ramón Lerma – The Ateneo Art Gallery: An Art Museum for our Time
The Ateneo Art Gallery, the first museum of modern Philippine art, traces its roots to the late visual artist and educator Fernando Zobel de Ayala. A scion of one of the country’s wealthiest families, from the years 1959 to 1966, Zobel bequeathed his private collection of artworks by post-war modernists as well as a sizeable trove of original fine prints and drawings by Western masters to the Ateneo de Manila University, a prestigious private Jesuit university located 15 kilometers north of the capital that counts among its alumni the National Hero Jose Rizal, and generations of the country’s ruling classes – the political and economic elite, from Presidents of the Republic to captains of industry.
The collection surveys every art movement in the Philippines since 1950 – from Neo-Realism – a reaction to the conservatism embodied by the dominant school of Fernando Amorsolo – exemplified by the works of Zobel, Arturo Luz, Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi and Ang Kiukok, to the geometric and abstract expressionism of Vicente Oteyza, Lee Aguinaldo and again Zobel. Originally housed in a converted classroom at Bellarmine Hall, the museum moved to the ground floor of the university’s main Rizal Library in 1967 where it has remained since.
It must be recalled that the original vision and mission of the museum reflected Zobel’s desire to support emerging talent – many of whom he became acquainted with through the now defunct Philippine Art Gallery – and to provide a modest study collection for the university.
From 1961 through 2001, under the stewarship of Zobel’s hand-picked curator, his star-pupil in art appreciation, the poet Emmanuel Torres, the Ateneo’s collection expanded considerably, with important works by pre- and post-war modernists such as Galo Ocampo, Nena Saguil and Diosdado Lorenzo filling gaps in the collection.
Torres likewise threw his support in the late 60s to the early 80s behind the works of the artists who emerged during the regime of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Known collectively as the Social Realists, the likes of Edgar Talusan Fernandez, Pablo Baen Santos, Renato Habulan, the late Alfredo Manrique and Jose Tence Ruiz brought propaganda from the underground resistance into the mainstream, their diatribes against repression and the curtailments of basic freedoms often leading to frequent visits by the constabulary and threats of museum closure or the detention of its staff..
Post-EDSA, the Ateneo continued to expand its holdings, its string of acquisitions – all of these donated by alumni, friends of the museum, and artists by invitation – reflecting the continued trajectory of established art movements, as well as the hybrid tendencies of emergent contemporary artists, among these Lazaro Soriano, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi, Anna Fer and Julie Lluch.
With Torres’ retirement in 2001, and my assumption of the new post of Director and Chief Curator of the museum, one of my first acts was to retool the institution’s vision/mission to reflect the richness and diversity of modern and contemporary Philippine art. It was clear that the time had come for the Ateneo Art Gallery to move away from the traditional concept of the museum as mausoleum, with an immutable permanent collection. Art had already moved beyond the concept of the object in the white cube to find other modalities of expression – from installation, to performance to cyberspace. My first task was to draw my primary audience back, without ignoring the fact that the collection’s significance had now moved beyond the confines of the ivied halls of university, to a collection of national and international significance. The challenge was to address such a paradigmatic shift, and to respond to an even more daunting challenge – the niggling question of relevance and responsibility inevitably asked of art institutions in developing countries.
In the face of economic strife, even for an institution as well-placed as the Ateneo, the raison d’etre of the Gallery and its sustainability became a matter of contention. It was in this light that I proposed a new vision/mission: the credo behind the Gallery’s expanded exhibition and public programs. While our primary audience remained the students of the University – who could conceivably attend the Ateneo from kindergarten right through to gaining their doctorates – our efforts were also driven by a desire to reach out to a wider audience. In addition to organizing exhibitions based solely on the permanent collection, the museum also organized retrospectives focusing on underrated artists whose works had long languished in storage, and themed shows that brought together works from the Ateneo trove and from elsewhere. We embraced overseas loan exhibitions and initiated an international program called “Engage” that enabled works by significant contemporary artists from overseas to show their works in the Philippines and be exposed to the local art scene through residencies. For six years now, we have been running a lecture program called “ArtSpeak;” and educational modules under the “Artivity” umbrella accompany a number of our exhibitions. With the establishment of an undergraduate fine arts program at the university that includes a course track in arts management, the Gallery has likewise emerged as a student laboratory for research and curatorial practice.
That being said, our most important initiative to date is the annual Ateneo Art Awards, which has become the backbone of our public programs. Established in 2004 to honor the memory of Fernando Zobel whose support for emergent talent strongly influenced the development of art in the Philippines, the Awards seek to encapsulate the catalytic role of the Gallery as a platform for engagement.
Indeed, there is perhaps no other culture in the world more complex than the Philippines, where the personal, familial, regional, national and global coalesce. It is this multifaceted nature that clearly circumscribes contemporary Philippine art practice, imbuing it with a palpable richness and complexity. Little wonder then that local art practitioners – in spite of the myriad challenges that come from working within the context of a society that has by and large struggled to provide them with substantive levels of support—still continue to brim with promise. This is no truer than in the case of the country’s young, emerging talent, whose confidence, technical sophistication and intellectual maturity are reflected in the superlative works that the Ateneo Art Awards seek to recognize annually.
