The MET Collection of Philippine Art

Met Museum offers a rare chance to view its outstanding Philippine art collection in the ongoing exhibit, Recollect: Revisiting the Metropolitan of Manila Collection. The show features 96 paintings, sculptures, and mixed media works that resulted in the efforts of the Museum to collect in the 1990s. Except for the two artworks that are currently on loan to other museums, the exhibit features the collection in its entirety.

The Metropolitan Museum was initially established in 1976 as a venue for temporary international art exhibitions. With the change of government in 1986, the Museum also reviewed its policies and began to place equal emphasis on the promotion of Philippine art. Two decades after its existence, and with a firm grasp of its mandate as a Philippine museum of contemporary visual arts, the Museum began building its permanent collection, relying solely on the generosity and support of Filipino artists.

Recollect shows the Met Collection as a product of its milieu, providing interesting points of reacquaintance with the issues and concerns addressed by the leading and up-and-coming contemporary Filipino artists in the last decade of the previous millenium. Whether figurative or abstract in expression, and whether preoccupied with social, personal and purely aesthetic concerns, all the works actively participated in the art discourse of their time, and because of the standard of excellence they espoused, found permanent home in the Met Museum.

Among the highlights of the Met Collection are the controversial 1995 Flor Contemplacion Portrait by Bencab (now a National Artist); the 1990 Debt by Charlie Co, a commentary on the IMF-World Bank debt situation of the country; the color-soaked Bali-inspired paintings of J. Elizalde Navarro (also subsequently declared National Artist); the original plaster cast of Three Buddha Mothers by Agnes Arellano, Pasyong Bayan by Imelda Cajipe Endaya, India at Ilustrada by Ana Fer, Yellow Exploration Lor Calma, and many more.

RECOLLECT: Revisiting the Metropolitan Museum of Manila Collection is ongoing at the Tall Galleries and Catwalk of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila until April 24, 2010.

The Met Museum is located at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Complex, Roxas Boulevard, Manila.

Museum hours are from Monday to Saturday, 9am – 6pm.
For inquiries, call 523-7855 or email info@metmuseum.ph.


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