WALA LANG Twin buildings are rising in Diliman near the Carillon and the Film Center. One is the Black Box KAL Theater, the other a gallery. The former has state-of-the-art lighting and sound equipment and can sit 350 to 450 people in rows facing a stage or in tiers on four sides as a...
WALA LANG On its 54th anniversary, celebrated this month, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) is strictly speaking, homeless. The main building on Roxas Boulevard has been dark since January and at its traditional location, only the recently inaugurated Teatro Ignacio Gimenez (the Black...
WALA LANG A remarkable couple, banker Edwin Bautista and academician Aileen B. Bautista, teamed up to form a unique collection of Philippine material heritage that the perceptive scholar and writer Florencio “Floy” Quintos declares “gives a deeper meaning and resonance to the narrative of an...
WALA LANG *THE HOLY GRAIL Juan Luna's Hymen, O Hyménée was considered missing until it was found at a Spanish aristocratic family's home (Photo Leon Gallery)* There is excitement—pro and con—over the recently rediscovered Hymen, O Hyménée painted by Juan Luna and exhibited as part of...
WALA LANG *IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME The Teus house and a great grand daughter of its builder Ms. Begona Cabral Vara de Rey* The first lady, Mme. Marie Louise “Liza” Araneta Marcos, has created museums intended to make Filipinos know and be proud of their historic past. They are housed in three...
WALA LANG *HYMEN, O HYMÉNÉE The painting and a detail, the bridesmaids (Leon Gallery).* On exhibit at the Ayala Museum is a rediscovered Juan Luna, Hymen, O Hyménée!. Repatriated from Spain by León Gallery’s Jaime Ponce de León, the painting depicts a bridal procession as it might have...
WALA LANG Gossiping oldies would warn each other that there was danger—that young blabbermouths were within earshot—and the topic had better be less juicy. Until the mid-1800s, Mindanao pirates preyed on coastal towns from the Ilocos in northern Luzon down to the Bicol region and all over the...
WALA LANG I suppose that in one’s senior years, one hopes to be mentally sound, to have good friends to bum around with, to have a large bank of happy memories, and have the joy of looking with pride at one’s children. For this article, the 600th of “Wala Lang,” I thought I’d share some...
WALA LANG Looks The Bisaya were called “pintados” for good reason. The author of the Boxer Codex’ chapter 5 admires their tattoos, “…done in the manner of illuminations, painting all parts of the body, such as the chest, stomach, legs, arms, shoulders, hands, and muscles …” Some had...
WALA LANG Conquistadors were busily conquering and frailes converting, but some scholarly types asked around and wrote about the land and the indios they found. In 1590, it was probably Governor General Luis Pérez Dasmariñas who got someone to summarize the most reliable accounts then available,...
WALA LANG OIL ON OAK Adoration of the Kings, Jan Gossaert (National Gallery of Art, London) The Three Kings arrived in Bethlehem bringing to the Child Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Everyone knows gold but frankincense and myrrh? Used in religious ceremonies, they came from faraway...
WALA LANG We hadn’t been together for going on three years now and so my family thought we needed revenge travel. We’re in diaspora, living in Spain, the US, Singapore, Makati, and QC with different work and school schedules so it took several months of Zoom discussions before a decision was...
