exPLOsition / exPLOsitie - Brussels

Retrospective graffiti / street art 2000 - 2010

Defo, Eyes B, Bonom, Diogène, Hell’O Monsters, Arne Quinze, Parole et Obes, BYZ, Sozyone, NA, Léopoldine Roux …

Musée d'Ixelles - Museum van Elsene - Museum of Ixelles

Photo : Eyes B - Atomix 2010

Easy to miss

From the road, the ancestral house of the Legarda family looks like any of the few 1930s houses in Manila that survived World War II—though better maintained than most—and belies the wealth of history that lies within. The garden in front is planted with many herbs which are used to season the dishes served in the restaurant.




Only this small wooden sign on the privacy wall announces that the house is the proud location of La Cocina de Tita Moning. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #9

Old world elegance

As I mentioned at the start of this series about the ancestral home of the Legarda family, the house is now also a fine dining restaurant called La Cocina de Tita Moning. Appetizers are served in the sala (living room) while you wait for your table in the dining room to be prepared. All the china, glassware and silverware on each table were actually used by the family and their guests across three generations, and the beautiful table settings are complemented by elegant Italian glass birds of different shapes and sizes. The menu of the restaurant are from recipes which date back to the time of Alejandro and Ramona—European and Filipino family favorites and special occasion dishes served to their distinguished guests. La Cocina de Tita Moning is operated by the long-time servants of the Legarda family, and the small scroll on the table introduces each of them and tells their stories. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #8

White

An all-white bedroom in the ancestral home of the Legarda family displays the wedding gown of one of Alejandro and Ramona's daughters. Isn't that train just magnificent? • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #7

Ornate whimsy

With my fascination for lamps and lighting fixtures, a lamp was bound to catch my eye in the 1937 home of Alejandro and Ramona Legarda. I just love the young person with a monkey cavorting all over this particular metal chandelier. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #6

Another hobby

Aside from being an avid photographer, Dr. Alejandro Legarda was also an amateur radio operator and a member of the Philippine Amateur Radio Association. He had a room specially built for his radio equipment on the third level of their house and when he got too old to walk up the stairs, everything was moved to a room on the ground floor, where they remain on display. However, the equipment that you see here are actually his newer ones, the older equipment having been donated to a museum. Because of his hobby, Alejandro once saved a boat from a storm at sea and received an award for it. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #5

Hobby

Dr. Alejandro Legarda was an avid amateur photographer. He kept his own dark room in their home and was one of the first members of the Camera Club of the Philippines; he remained a member until his death in 1993. His now-antique cameras and other accouterments of early to middle 20th century photography are on display in their own room at the Legarda ancestral house. According to the guide, most of the photos in the house were taken and developed by Alejandro. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #4

Victorian nightmare

Alejandro Legarda was an Obstetrician & Gynecologist and had a clinic in his house. In fact, one of his sons was born in this very clinic. Yes, the skeleton is real; Alejandro used it when he was in medical school. Pardon the title, but I couldn't help it; this clinic just reminds me of Victorian sanatoriums and asylums I see in movies • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #3

Pride of place

The interiors of the Legarda ancestral house is a perfect example of American colonial era home design in Manila. I will not be the only Manileño to say that it reminds me of my own grandmother's house. What I find absolutely amazing is how everything—from the furniture to the bric-a-brac—is wonderfully preserved. It is to the Legarda family's credit that the younger generations resisted the urge to modernize the home (well, except for the air-conditioner, that is).




The living room has two sets of seating. The one above flanked by family photographs, and another directly across, above which hangs the centerpiece of the room: a painting by Filipino artist Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (21 February 1855–13 March 1913), a contemporary and close friend of Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal. Titled "La Inocencia," it is still in its original Art Noveau frame and is believed to be a painting of Hidalgo's mistress in France. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #2

Ancestral home

Welcome to the home of Alejandro Legarda and his wife Ramona Hernandez, now a museum and fine dining restaurant called La Cocina de Tita Moning (The Kitchen of Aunt Ramona). Built in 1937, it was one of Manila's first art deco houses. It is located along San Rafael Street in the San Miguel district of Manila which, before the war, used to be one of the city's most elegant neighborhoods and home to many of Manila's most elite families. Malacañang Palace, the official residence of the President of the Philippines, is also in the San Miguel district. In the next few days, we will be touring this elegant house where Alejandro and Ramona raised four children and which was used by three generations of the Legarda clan. • LEGARDA ANCESTRAL HOUSE #1

Didn't stop them

I had to wait a bit before getting the photo of the Museum of the Filipino People which I posted the other day because of this group of young people who were having their own photo shoot. The entrance to the museum is at the back of the building because it is nearer the National Art Gallery, and these stairs are cordoned off by a rope with signs that say "No Entry."

Grand pastel

Last year, I was able to post some detail shots of the old Finance Building, which is now the Museum of the Filipino People. Here is the facade in its entirety. The building has since gotten a fresh coat of creamy yellow paint which, according to arts advocate and heritage conservationist John Silva, was its original color. They discovered it by carefully peeling away all the layers of paint that its walls and columns had accumulated over the decades. And no, it's not curved and I don't know why my photos of wide buildings usually end up like this.

GRAFFITI NEERPEDE

Neerpede, a museum dedicated to urban graffiti (in french) ... Tsunami Art

Secular relic

After Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal was executed by the Spanish colonial government in 1896, he was buried in the Paco Cemetery with no identification on his grave. One of his sisters went around the cemetery and, seeing freshly turned earth on one grave site, asked the caretaker to mark it with "RPJ," Rizal's initials in reverse. After the Philippines declared independence from Spain two years later, she retrieved her brother's remains, which are now enshrined at the Rizal Monument in Luneta, the place of Rizal's execution. One bone with a bullet wound was enshrined separately in a glass urn which is kept in a glass case at the Rizal Shrine in Fort Santiago, where Rizal was imprisoned before his execution.

See what's reflecting what at James' Weekend Reflections.

Sweeping

The Philippine National Art Gallery, the home of Juan Luna's Spoliarium, is a 1916 American colonial era building which used to be the Philippines' Legislative Building, just as the building of the National Museum of the Filipino People used to be the Finance Building. This is the Legislative Building's elegant marble spiral staircase with wrought iron banisters and a softly gleaming wooden handrail. I just wish the gallery staff didn't keep supplies and trash under the stairs, even temporarily.

Porcelain and artillery

The San Diego was a 16th century galleon, a three-masted trading ship built in 1590 in the province of Cebu by Spanish, Chinese and Filipino shipbuilders. It used different kinds of Asian woods and was about 35–40 meters (115–130 feet) long, 12 meters (39 feet) wide and 8 meters (26 feet) high. It had at least four decks and could hold about 700 tons of cargo.




In November of 1600, the San Diego was refitted by the Spanish colonial government to help fight Dutch corsairs who were preying on ships entering Manila harbor. The battle took place in December and resulted in a draw, with one Dutch ship, the Mauritius, catching fire, and the San Diego, which was still laden with cargo and overloaded with the added artillery and ammunition, sinking.




Antonio de Morga, who led the Spanish fleet and survived to write about the attack in his book Sucesos de las islas Filipinas in 1609, only mentioned that the San Diego sank somewhere south of Manila Bay.




It was not until 1991 that the San Diego wreck was discovered off the town of Nasugbu in the province of Batangas. In 1992, the galleon was excavated with the help of hundreds of people of different nationalities and the support of the Philippine, French, German, Spanish and American governments.




To date, the San Diego shipwreck is the Philippines' most important underwater archeological discovery. Of the more than 30,000 artifacts found in the shipwreck, 5,000 are now in the Museum of the Filipino People. The artifacts include Chinese porcelain, Japanese swords, European cannons, helmets and astrolabes, and Mexican coins. Understandably, the San Diego collection is one of the museum's most extensive and important exhibits.

Ancient methods

When the Spaniards arrived in our islands in the 16th century, they discovered indigenous peoples that were well-organized into independent villages called the barangay (which is still the word we use for the smallest unit of our government). The word comes from the Austronesian word for sailboat, balangay or balanghai, a prehistoric wooden sailboat used by many of the island peoples of Southeast Asia and Oceania.




In the 1970s, nine of these balangay were discovered off the coast of Butuan City in the province of Agusan del Norte by archeologists of the National Museum. Only three have been excavated so far. One is still being reconstructed; the older of the other two, dated at 320 CE, is displayed in a museum in Butuan. This one is the third, dated at 1250, and is in the maritime hall of the Museum of the Filipino People. Only a few pieces of the boat survived its centuries-long immersion but the museum reconstructed a large part of the hull so visitors can better appreciate what it looks like.




Last year, a group of Filipino adventurers from the teams that scaled Mt. Everest in 2006 and 2007 decided to recreate a balangay using the same wood and construction methods that our ancestors would have used, and sail it using only the navigation methods available to the earliest mariners. The first voyage will be in Philippine waters, the second will be around Southeast Asia, and the third—the most ambitious of all—will be to sail to Madagascar. They are currently in the middle of the ninth leg of their ten-leg Philippine journey. If you're interested in their adventure, you can visit the Voyage of the Balangay website or follow them on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Last look

The small Ateneo Art Gallery holds the distinction of being the first museum in the country dedicated to Philippine modern art. The gallery was established in 1960 when Fernando Zobel de Ayala (b. 1924, d. 1984) gifted the university with a large collection of works by postwar artists. An even smaller room in the gallery always displays selections from the Zobel bequest. The whimsical artwork on the left is a hand-colored lithograph by Lithuanian-born American artist Ben Shahn (b. 1898, d. 1969) from 1952 titled "Boy Eating Ice Cream."




Because the gallery is small, very few pieces from its permanent collection—paintings and sculptures—can be displayed. During the few weeks in a year when the larger room does not have a special exhibit, the gallery staff brings out more pieces from the permanent collection to display. The large yellow abstract painting in the back is by Philippine National Artist for the Visual Arts Jose Joya (b. 1931, d. 1995) from 1958 titled "Granadean Arabesque."




Yesterday, March 15, marked the last day of the gallery in the rooms in these photos. Thanks to the construction of the new Rizal Library, the Ateneo Art Gallery is moving into the spacious first floor of the library's old building. I can't wait to see their new space when the renovations are done and they re-open.

Smooth Corinthian

The National Museum of the Philippines is currently housed in two neo-classical buildings in the City of Manila. The archeological artifacts comprise the Museum of the Filipino People collections, housed in the former Finance Building which I've featured several times in the past. The National Art Gallery is in the former Legislative Building right across the street. Both were designed principally by Filipino architect Antonio Toledo who was influenced by the city plan originally formulated by American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham. The columns of the two buildings are almost exactly alike—they have the same capitals but unlike those of the Finance Building, which are fluted, the shafts of the Legislative Building's columns are smooth.

Stoop

I've already shown several photos of the historic building of the Museum of the Filipino People. Now, let's finally step inside (yes, they allow photos of the exhibits as long as you don't use a flash). The museum is the repository of much of the archeological treasures discovered all over the Philippines, hence the name. One of the first things you will see upon entering the museum is the garden in the middle, which has a replica of a traditional Ifugao house. The Ifugao are one of several tribal peoples who live in the Cordillera mountain range north of Metro Manila (it is also the name of the province where they live). The thickly thatched roof shelters the entire house down to the level of the raised floor, necessary in the rains and cold weather of the mountains. This means that one has to stoop or squat to get to the ladder which leads to the doorway.



Inside the museum, there is a model of another Ifugao house, which has as many varieties as there are Ifugao sub-groups. The model is not accurate in its use of materials, however. Bamboo slats will not provide much shelter from the cold winds that blow throughout the Cordilleras.



If you want to see the colorful handwoven traditional dress of the Igorot, the generic term used for the six distinct ethno-linguistic groups of the Cordilleras including the Ifugao, the tourists we saw at Mines View Park in Baguio City last year wore them for their souvenir photo.