While researching visual representations of port cities, I encountered an unexpected object at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum: a nineteenth-century letras y figuras painting by the Manila artist José Honorato Lozano (1815/1821–1885). The Roosevelt Library—best known for presidential papers, wartime correspondence, and family memorabilia—is not the first place art historians would think to look for works of Philippine painting, which may explain why these works have remained largely absent from the scholarly literature. The painting entered the collection through the Estate of Laura Delano Eastman, which donated it to the FDR Library in 2008.

The discovery prompted me to trace the work within the wider dispersal of Philippine objects across global collections. The short digital tour linked below forms part of the Mapping Philippine Material Culture project hosted by Philippine Studies at SOAS, where I reflect on the unexpected afterlives of such objects and the routes by which they arrived in museums far from the archipelago.

Hop on the tour here:
https://philippinestudies.uk/mapping/tours/show/44