WALA LANG
Now on its soft opening—by appointment—is a transformed Ayala Museum. Completed after a two-year renovation, the old Greenbelt 4 concourse is now the museum’s vast lobby. An electronic board surveys the museum collection, introduced with a real-life retablo once in a Leyte church.
Upstairs is the inaugural exhibit, “TransPacific Engagements: Trade, Translation, and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1565-1898).” Organized by Florina H. Capistrano-Baker and Meha Priyadarshini, it highlights ivory and other extraordinary objects made or used in the Philippines or shipped from here during the Spanish Regime. Some are on loan from abroad, back briefly to Manila for the first time since leaving centuries ago.
A weighty tome of essays presents the context of the exhibit.
The Pacific Ocean was a Spanish lake from 1565 when Fray Andres de Urdaneta discovered the ocean currents that brought people and goods between Asia and North America, until 1815 when Mexico won independence and the Galleon Trade ended.
Dr. Ricardo Padrón’s essay on a remarkable 1751 map drawn by Vicente de Memije and engraved by Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay neatly summarizes the Spanish presence. Titled Aspecto Symbólico del Mundo Hispánico, it depicts the Spanish Empire that encompassed the Americas and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
THE SPANISH EMPIRE ON A WORLD MAP Aspecto Symbólico del Mundo Hispánico by Vicente Laureano de Memije, 1761 (British Library)
The empire is shown as a woman. Her crowned head is on Iberia and her feet are on the Philippines. The jewels of her necklace are Spanish galleons and the pendant, a compass rose. The Americas are a shawl. The folds of her skirt are formed by the westward and eastward routes of Spanish ships. Luzon is the design of her right shoe and Mindanao, the left. The equator is a staff resting by the Philippines and bearing the Spanish Flag, a cross at its tip. The Philippines, known as being in the Far East by everyone else, is the far west—Islas del Poniente or Western Islands—as far as Spain was concerned.
Other essays are on material culture, heavy on Chinese export painting and ivory santos carved here or in Goa and Macao, for export to the Americas and Europe or for Philippine homes and churches. Other essays cover textiles, cuisine, politics, religion, trade, and related areas, including one on Bian Zhengjiao Zhenchuan Shilu by Juan Cobo, the second earliest book printed in the Philippines.
After the Galleon Trade ended, Spanish colonial policy in the Philippines encouraged commercial agriculture (sugar, coffee, coconut, abaca) and opened Manila to international trade. European and American trading houses opened shop. The Manila Railroad was built by Brits. Not least, ideas for reform and independence arrived from Europe and Latin America.
The 333 years covered by the exhibit were not exactly pacific. The Dutch carried their War of Independence against Spain (1568-1648) to the Philippines and so did the Brits during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Long-running enmity between Britain and Spain also accounted for the capture of four galleons loaded with goods or silver by Thomas Cavendish (1589), Woodes Rogers (1709), and George Anson (1743 and 1762). In the 19th century, the US forcibly ended Japan’s isolation and began taking over Hawaii.
Other Europeans also cast an eye on the South Pacific. Englishman Captain James Cook led three voyages (1768-1779), reaching Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 19th century, the French took over islands still known as French Polynesia. It was also the era of the romantic sailing ships and New England whalers (remember Captain Ahab and the white whale Moby Dick).
In the arts, Japanese woodblock prints by Hiroshige, Utamaro, and others influenced the likes of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas. Paul Gauguin sailed for Tahiti in 1891 where he produced some of his masterpieces.
The most significant trade objects that crossed the Pacific were silks worn by European nobility and porcelain that still adorn European palaces, payment for which was in silver cobs, coins, and ingots mined and minted in Latin America. The Spanish also aimed to make the Philippines a base for the conversion of Asia. Early in the 17th century, San Lorenzo Ruiz and many others suffered martyrdom in Japan. Coverts found refuge in Manila and the high-ranking Daimyo Takayama Ukon died in Manila exile.
The exhibit does not dwell on these, but Baker and Priyadarshini have brought together a spectacular array of religious images in ivory and fabulous elite possessions in this once-in-a-lifetime show.
(to be continued)
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected].