PH to showcase pre-colonial gold treasures in New York

ANCIENT PHILIPPINE GOLD Four of the 120 rare gold items to be on display at the Asia
Society Museum inNew York City. PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BANGKOSENTRAL NG PILIPINAS AND AYALA MUSEUM

The Philippines will exhibit at the Asia Society Museum in New York more than 120 of its rarest and most exquisite ancient gold treasures to offer a cosmopolitan audience glimpses of a sophisticated and ingenious civilization that thrived long before Europeans reached the archipelago in the 16th century.

The exhibit, titled “Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms,” will include golden necklaces, chains, waistbands, bangles, ritual bowls, implements, ceremonial weapons and other artifacts dated between the 10th and 13th centuries.

The artifacts are on loan from the collections of Ayala Museum and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

The exhibit will run from Sept. 11 to Jan. 3, 2016, at the Asia Society Museum, located at 725 Park Avenue in New York.

It is aimed at a broad range of audience: Wall Street traders, Filipino-Americans, industry captains, the American public, expatriates and people from the creative industries like fashion and design.

The exhibition focuses on the wealth of the golden age of Butuan, a polity in Mindanao that rose to prominence in the 13th century, according to the Asia Society website.

“Works from ancient polities beyond Butuan, such as those on the islands of the Visayas and Luzon, bear witness to the early use of gold throughout the Philippines,” the society said.

A selection of the most extraordinary objects from a 1981 discovery from Ayala Museum forms the core of the exhibition, which also includes a few important loans from public and private collections, including the BSP.

BSP, Locsin collections

The treasures were all discovered in the Philippines in the past 40 years and collected by the BSP and by the late architect Leandro Locsin and his wife, Cecilia.

Doris Magsaysay-Ho, Asia Society Philippines chair, said the Philippine exhibition was “extremely timely,” coming just as the country is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) CEO Summit in November.

“While the Philippines has a lot of press coming out on economic issues, we thought there could also be a cultural story,” Magsaysay-Ho said. “These artifacts are also very little known scholarship-wise, so with the opportunity to bring them to New York, we are holding symposiums that place the collection in the whole realm of historical scholarship in the Austronesian context.”

In a press briefing on Friday, BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said this would be the first time that the BSP’s collection of gold ornaments—some of which were over 1,000 years old—would be showcased in the United States.

“Our precolonial collection provides insights into a glorious past we Filipinos can be truly proud of. First, that we had a distinct culture and art tradition that resulted from a fusion of indigenous and diverse foreign influences. Second, that our ancestors had both the artistry and the technical ingenuity to craft these magnificent and complex gold pieces that remain much-admired by contemporary artisans. And, third, that we had a flourishing economy with active domestic and international trade conducted through barter and gold payment,” Tetangco said.

Among the BSP pieces to be exhibited is a “piloncito,” a gold nugget believed to be part of an early form of coinage system whose value was determined by its weight, Tetangco said.

Two “kandits,” or royal gold belts, one of which weighs more than 1 kilo, will also be exhibited.

Long before Westerners came

“Looking at these gold objects, we can conclude that before Westerners came to our shores, we already had a thriving cosmopolitan trading center doing active trading with neighboring kingdoms and islands,” Tetangco said.

With the Philippines drawing international attention as an emerging economy, Tetangco said this was the “most opportune” time for the world to know more about the country and its people “through our history wrought in gold.”

The BSP’s gold collection is displayed at the Met Museum at the BSP head office on Roxas Boulevard while the Locsins’ collection is part of the permanent exhibits at Ayala Museum.

“[W]hile some precolonial gold pieces found by people unaware of [their] historical value have been irretrievably lost to melting, we can take comfort from the fact that we have two museums in Metro Manila where our people can [see] golden treasures from our past,” Tetangco said.

Not primitive

Fernando Zobel de Ayala, president of Ayala Corp., said it was unfortunate that there had not been many opportunities to showcase the Philippines’ rich culture in a significant way in the United States despite the long historical and economic relationship between the two countries.

By bringing the rare gold collection to New York, he said, the Philippines would give Americans and visitors to New York the opportunity to get to know more about the rich Filipino culture as well as bring great pride to Filipinos in the United States.

“The Philippines and Philippine culture tend to be perceived internationally in terms of our colonial history under Spain and under the US. We Filipinos also tend to perceive our cultural heritage in terms of our Catholic, Hispanicized and Americanized identities,” Zobel de Ayala said.

“This exhibition is of great importance because it demonstrates to the international community, and to everyone at home, that the Philippines had a sophisticated culture before contact with the West; that we had close ties with the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia and the Asian mainland; that our precolonial culture was actually very similar to those of our Hindu-Buddhist neighbors before Westernization, and that we were actively engaged in international maritime trade with other Asians. The superior quality of the gold ornaments also dispels the Western stereotype of precolonial Filipinos as ignorant and primitive before Spanish and American intervention,” he added.

Tetangco said the BSP’s gold treasure collection had been shown in Europe twice: first in the 1990s and in 2013 at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in partnership with the French government.

“In Paris, visitors were amazed at the sophistication and artistry of our precolonial gold ornaments,” Tetangco said.

He said the BSP believed that cultural properties could promote better understanding and appreciation of the Philippines’ evolution as a nation.

“Among Filipinos, this serves as a powerful catalyst for instilling a strong sense of national identity and love of country, attributes that foster social stability and economic growth. Thus, the BSP ensures that outstanding examples of Filipino genius in its gold, art and numismatic collections are shared with the people through exhibits, books, CDs, social media and provincial lectures,” he said.

PH in the spotlight

Beginning with the opening benefit gala dinner in New York on Sept. 10, Asia Society has lined up activities to promote Philippine culture to a global audience.

The activities include academic lectures, a pop-up Philippine food bar, musical events, art and design exhibitions, a film festival and live cultural performances.

Other events organized by Asia Society Philippines in Manila will support the activities.

Founded by John Rockefeller

Founded in 1956 by American philanthropist John Rockefeller III, Asia Society is a nonpartisan and nonprofit institution dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States.

Across the fields of arts, business, culture, education and policy, the organization provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes collaboration to deal with present challenges and create a shared future.

Masaysay-Ho, Zobel de Ayala and Loida Nicolas Lewis are driving the gold treasure exhibit with support from the BSP’s Tetangco.

Ayala Museum curator Nina Capistrano-Baker and Adriana Proser, John H. Foster senior curator for Traditional Asian Art at Asia Society New York, will cocurate the New York exhibition.

Originally posted: 06:34 PM August 7th, 2015

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