Ayala Museum and Filipinas Heritage Library:
Helping Build Intellectual Capacities

Given the rich artistic and cultural heritage of the Philippines, it has become commonplace among institutions and individuals to create various programs that foster pride of this heritage. These programs are seen as agents of social cohesion and cooperation, both of which are especially crucial to a young nation rebuilding itself after centuries of struggle and development under foreign rule.

Today, programs on arts and culture must fulfill a role apart from social cohesion. Philippine contemporary society is beset with problems that demand solutions that are only as effective as our understading of Philippine history, culture, norms and mores. The Ayala Foundation has sought to address these problems through a broad spectrum of social development efforts that always integrate an understanding of Philippine culture and the arts. It believes that dismissing one's culture and artistic tradition as irrelevant to our personal and national development is tantamount to dismissing the imagination and intellect, which are embodied in the culture and the arts. A deeper and broader understanding of what Filipinos value and embrace, how we conceive and understand our society, enables us to make informed decisions and reasoned judgements. In conjuction with this is the recognition of the fact that an impoverished spirit can debilitate the Filipino as much as economic poverty.

The Ayala Museum and the Filipinas Heritage Library, since their inception in 1967 and 1996 respectively, have been creating programs that go beyond provinding Filipinos with models of triumph and achivement (whether through our heroes, artists, or events) in the face of struggle and adversity. Both the museum and the library, through their public exhibitions, lectures, research, and publications, always aim to equip Filipinos with a multi-disciplinary way of understanding the environment one lives and works in. The Ayala Foundation understands that in contemporary society, intelligence is diverse, and excellence in art is equally championed as excellence in science. In the same way that innovations in architecture were borne out of innovations in music, business or social development solutions may be borne out of an understanding of Philippine maritime trade in the 18th and 19th centuries or even, perhaps, the composition of an abstract painting.

This multi-disciplinary characteristic of intelligence and excellence is evident in the diversity of programs set up the museum and the library.

An outstanding example is Ayala Museum's first international exhibition, Pioneers of Philippine Art: Luna, Amorsolo, Zobel, which was mounted at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. The artworks of Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo, and Fernando Zobel, are viewed through the lens of Philippine history-from the Spanish colonial period to the first blush of modernism in the Philippines-and therefore seen not as static artworks on the wall but as urgent and heroic dialogues with the challenges of the periods they lived in, which then inspired great change in Philippine history and society. In an effort to truly address a wide spectrum of audience, the exhibition was complemented by other educational formats for use in either the classroom or at home.

Just recently, the Filipinas Heritage Library undertook the development of Philippine trade history as one of its core collections. Apart from the fact that the historical development of the Ayala group of companies and the economic development of the country from the 19th century up to the present are inseperable, the library deems it important to position our trade history as part and parcel of our national heritage. Filipinos do not question the fact that we area an artistic people-perhaps it is time to see ourselves in terms of our excellences and our story as a people in the disciplines of business and trade. Part also of the appeal of the Filipinas Heritage Library not only to students and scholars but also to urban professionals, photographers, artists and cultural workers, writers, and government employees, is its diverse programs in continuing education outside the classroom, whether in photography, literature, documentary filmmaking or even dance.

The arts and culture programs at the museum and the library reveal extraordinary evidence of Filipino creativity, encouragin each one to excel in the fields they are interested in. To a large extent, this triumph of the spirit may open up opportunities that otherwise would not have been available to them. Through the museum and the library, the Ayala Foundation challenges the notion that third world countries are inhospitable to the arts. Instead, they Ayala Foundation also empowers a previously marginalized sector of society--artists and cultural workers--and provides them income and employment--a means to succeed and flourish--in a developing country.