Salcedo Auctions launches its new program, Private Art, Public Lives, with an exhibition featuring the collection of UnionBank CEO Edwin Bautista and his wife, Aileen.

The idea behind it is expressed by Richie Lerma: “This exhibition is a realization of a dream to support the educative work of our museums - a sector that I worked in for over a decade and where in fact I got the inspiration for ‘Private Art, Public Lives.’”

It marks a milestone with the auction house collaborating with the private sector in sharing collections (in the case of the Bautistas, much of it never shown publicly before) to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of our culture. More than that, it is hoped that by such exhibitions, and with the perspective of curators, like Floy Quintos, we can also adopt a more critical thinking to reexamine our past without the screens of the Western gaze.

Quintos sees anting-antings, for example, as expressions in a “language of resistance,” and delights in Bautista’s collection of mamarachos - “an exploration of forms that show how the Catholic God and the saints were perceived by artisans who dared to re-imagine the Divine.”

Bautista questions the widely held notion that the Spaniards brought the jewelry-making style of filigree to the Philippines, when in fact early excavated objects already display our artisan’s mastery of the craft.  

This exhibition is more than just a pageantry of precious objects. It presents a challenge to historical as well as our own acquired biases.

Words by Devi De Veyra