The Jorge Vargas Museum is a humble and elegant institution, but I have sometimes thought that the artist who is offered a one-man show there might well think twice before accepting. Maybe it’s the air of self-importance that surround those exhibitions they hand an artist there, maybe it’s simply that few men have the actual…

I was searching through the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) collection last night, out of curiosity, for a Filipino artist and found only two names. The first one is Lino Brocka. The original film of Bona is currently kept—luckily—in the MoMA Film Archive of the world’s best movies. I think there is no existing copy…

Last night at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, as the torrential weather coated the entire city with an unlikely charm, a warm and wonderful treat took place.  The French conductor Olivier Ochanine, who became the musical director of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra in March this year, had decided to present a superb selection consisting…

Bouquet Elegant by Juvenal Sansó, c. 1960, ink on paper Let me begin by telling you the story of how I crossed paths with Sansó. It happened, quite amusingly, two years ago at a group exhibition I organized in an SM Megamall gallery. Sansó happened to be passing by on his way to a different…

An Echo from the Fields Lex Marcos paints a Miguel Hernández tribute Geronimo Cristobal, Jr. April 16, 2010 The Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez’s last verse written on a hospital wall said, “Goodbye, brothers, comrades, friends: let me take my leave of the sun and the fields.” In this gripping final act of poetry, Hernández was…