Category: Sculpture
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The afterlives of Rizal’s A orillas del Pasig
A orillas del Pasig circulated in late nineteenth-century Manila as music sung in drawing rooms and printed as sheet music. Its most familiar version, A orillas del Pasig: Danza Filipina para Canto y Piano, features lyrics credited to José Rizal and music composed by his Ateneo Municipal classmate Blas Echegoyen. Hardly anyone remembers that the…
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José Rizal’s Drawings of Anting-Anting
Proving yet again that in any field of inquiry Rizal emerges as the ubiquitous scholar, this photograph from the Dean C. Worcester Collection at the Newberry Library (Ayer Philippine Photographs) shows a drawing of objects he reportedly discovered on a hill near Dapitan. The inscription reads: “Anillo de oro con un rubí y una medallita,…
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Amulets of historical imagination
In 2021 after numerous museum visits in Southeast Asia, I began reflecting on what collections revealed and concealed about history. The objects that most profoundly shifted my thinking were not the canonical works of art but the agimat, talismans seized under colonial regimes and now dispersed across museums. Just last week (September 21, 2025), while…
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Manila’s Monument to Queen Isabel II
The statue of Queen Isabel II is one of few public artworks that survive from the time of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. Located in front of Puerta Isabel II in Intramuros, Manila, this bronze monument has weathered the vicissitudes of Philippine history and the shifting tides of politics and empire. Commissioned in the…
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Juan Adán Morlán (1741–1816)
Juan Adán Morlán (1741–1816) is one of the defining sculptors of Spanish Neoclassicism, a figure whose artistic achievements were often intertwined with personal controversies and professional disputes. Born in Tarazona, Aragón, and baptized on March 1, 1741, Adán’s early life was rooted in a family of carpenters. His father’s craft provided the young Adán with…
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Machete of Paete and other Petrified Idols of Underdevelopment
Machete Poster and sculpture by Paloy Cagayat. Photo: Lakan Sining. The town of Paete, Laguna in the Philippines is an artisanal community famous for its living tradition of wood carving of religious santos. In 1580, the town came under the administration of Spanish friars Juan de Plasencia and Diego de Oropesa, who encountered a native…
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Rama Hari
In November 2017, the Times of India published a story about Prime Minister Narendra Modi applauding a ballet performance based on the Ramayana during the opening of the ASEAN Summit in Manila. According to Modi, the event which was attended by Donald Trump, Shinzo Abe, Joko Widodo, and Rodrigo Duterte among many others, shows India…
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Mystery Object
This brass cylinder is made distinctive by the incisions of figures that resemble reliefs from temples or medieval goblets. Roughly a meter high, the object is shaped like a lighthouse, with a conical head that detaches from the neck. The shape of a lotus bud is inscribed at the tip of this head which can…
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Protected: Biombo del Gobernador / Governor’s Screen Divider
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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David Medalla (1938-2020)
Peripatetic Filipino artist David Medalla, a pioneer of kinetic sculpture and participatory art performance, died in Manila on Monday, December 28. He was 82. He developed an early reputation as a poet and wünderkind during the immediate post-war period, and was recommended by American poet Mark van Doren to study Literature at Columbia University in…
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The Furnace of Kings
Carlos IV monument in Plaza Mayor, Intramuros c. 1898. Photo: John Tewell Collection. The statue of Carlos IV is one of few colonial era monuments that stand today in the old city of Manila called Intramuros. The original purpose of its commission, who made it, and the story of its construction have been largely forgotten,…
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A decent photo of Montauk Point
Over the summer break, I visited Montauk Point on the easternmost end of Long Island and I was intrigued by the information written on a tourist pamphlet that lighthouses were the very first public works project undertaken by the United States. The lighthouse along with the one at Camp Henry, as pointed out in “Conjuring…
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Brief notes on Teddy Roosevelt’s statue being removed from the steps of the Museum of Natural History
In the New York Times today: the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt, the former president of the United States who declared the end of the Philippine-American War in 1902, will be removed from the steps of the Museum of Natural History. The Museum maintains that it is removing the statue not because of Theodore Roosevelt’s…
Geronimo Cristobal 