After soft opening in December 2021, Ayala Museum is now in full swing with the opening of the fourth floor, which houses the museum’s revamped permanent exhibitions on Philippine Pre-colonial Gold, Indigenous Textiles & Southeast Asian Trade Ware Ceramics from the museum’s collection.
The three exhibitions jointly tell the story of the ‘Crossroads of Civilizations’ – how the country’s identity, imagery, and ingenuity were shaped by a millennium of interactions within the flourishing networks of exchange within Asia and beyond. Additionally, a Visible Storage is now added to the 4th floor where guests can view a portion of the archaeological, ethnographic, fine arts, and historical objects in Ayala Museum’s vast collection.
THE NEW EXHIBITIONS:
- Skeins of Knowledge, Threads of Wisdom
Indigenous textile arts in the Philippines demonstrate the ingenuity, creativity, adaptability, and sophistication of the early Filipinos. This exhibition makes today’s Filipinos aware that among our indigenous communities are living examples of how we might be able to restore some balance in our lives, in our country, and among global communities.
Skeins of Knowledge, Threads of Wisdom will place the textiles in the context of community, environment, culture, and tradition, spirit and matter.
- Ceramics and Cultural Currency: Exchanges of Pottery and Prestige
Large quantities of Chinese and Southeast Asian trade ceramics found in the Philippine archipelago indicate the active participation of our forefathers in a wide network of inland and inter-island trade and cultural exchange in the region as early as the ninth century. What made these ceramics so valuable that people travelled far and wide to obtain such vessels?
Ceramics and Cultural Currency: Exchanges of Pottery and Prestige examines the practical, social, economic, and spiritual values that Filipinos ascribed to these trade wares over a millennium of exchange.
- Gold of Ancestors: Pre-colonial Treasures in the Philippines
Originally opened in 2008, the Gold of Ancestors exhibition has been refreshed for a new generation. This exhibition of more than one thousand archaeological gold objects celebrates the cultures that flourished before the Spanish colonization of the islands. The precious objects in this exhibition were recovered in the Philippines in various archaeological contexts, often in association with tenth to twelfth-century Chinese export ceramics.
The archipelago’s strategic location, and its rich natural resources, created an important cultural nexus that made the Philippines an important crossroads of South and East Asian civilizations during pre-colonial times.
With the opening of the 4th floor, Ayala Museum now completes its onsite museum experiences. Still on view are ‘Intertwined: Transpacific, Transcultural Philippines’, ‘Landscape into Painting: Fernando Zobel Serie Blanca’, ‘Dioramas of Philippine History’, Filipinas Heritage Library’s ‘Liberation: War & Hope’, ‘Ayala Museum: In Microcosm’, and the ‘Globe Digital Gallery’.
To ensure guests continue to feel both inspired and safe when visiting the museum, operational adjustments and safety protocols remain part of the museum experience. Prebooked admissions, timed entries, and limited capacity on admissions will still be practiced at Ayala Museum.
Tickets and visitor guidelines are available through www.ayalamuseum.org.
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OTHER CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Intertwined: Transpacific, Transcultural Philippines
This exhibition with over 240 carefully curated objects seeks to illuminate our transpacific heritage generated by regional and global maritime exchanges. Beginning prehistory to the Spanish and early American colonial periods when ancient trade networks in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea stretched across the Pacific to Latin America, North America, and Europe.
Intertwined: Transpacific, Transcultural Philippines curated by Florina Capistrano-Baker Ph.D. marked the opening of Ayala Museum’s renovated main gallery and reaffirms the museum’s commitment to art and culture as pillars of nation-building.
Landscape into Painting: Fernando Zobel Serie Blanca
A new dedicated gallery in honor of artist Fernando Zobel who envisioned Ayala Museum is inaugurated with the exhibition “Landscape into Painting: Fernando Zobel Serie Blanca”, curated by Ditas R. Samson.
The body of work Fernando Zobel (1924-1984) executed from 1975 to 1978 is referred to as Serie Blanca. This exhibition aims to show why the White Series, considered the artist’s most lyrical and enigmatic work in pure abstraction, is a peak in Fernando Zobel’s mastery over material, form, and composition. Eminent art critic Emmanuel Torres described Zobel’s artistic journey as a “progression from the material to the spiritual.”
The Diorama Experience of Philippine History
The Diorama Experience exhibition has been synonymous with the Ayala Museum for the past fifty years. The sixty dioramas are designed to be a comprehensive visual approach to Philippine history.
During the closure, all 60 dioramas were individually conserved and cleaned. On top of that, this exhibition mainstay has been refreshed with new colors, graphics, and even an updated audio guide accessible through the Ayala Museum app.
Liberation: War & Hope
Filipinas Heritage Library’s free inaugural exhibition, Liberation: War and Hope, walks the path of the Philippines as it moves to a sense of normalcy, independence, and hope after centuries of oppression and struggle. It engages with photos, everyday objects, printed materials, and documents that compel the visitor to look in and rethink, reflect and remember the lives of those who lived prior, during, and immediately after the end of World War II.
Ayala Museum: In Microcosm
Nestled in an assemblage of tropical sands in the Pacific, the Philippines prides itself as a nation with a long history and rich cultural past.
Composed of various indigenous groups that evolved out of life’s habitational experiences, combined with foreign interactions/interventions, Ayala Museum wishes to offer a select array of cultural treasures from the past, as it introduces its perspective as an art and cultural institution in service to the people. Ayala Museum: In Microcosm is curated by Kenneth Esguerra.
