PHL pre-colonial art to feature in Paris museum this April

Published January 3, 2013 6:43pm

Pre-colonial Philippine art works will be featured at the world-famous Musée du Quai Branly in Paris this April, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday. The DFA said works in pre-colonial Filipino art selected from both public and private collections in the Philippines, Europe and the United States, will be shown. "Entitled, 'Philippines: Archipel des échanges' (archipelago of exchanges), the grand exhibition will be hosted by the Musée du Quai Branly in collaboration with the Philippine National Museum, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Ayala Museum, and will run from April 9 until July 14, 2013," the DFA said.

"This is one opportunity where we are not only encouraged to be proud of what we have but also gives us an opportunity to look at our ancestry, to look at where all of these impulses, artistic and creative, come from and perhaps we can use that knowledge to further our development as a people," co-curator Corazon Alvina said during a press conference on the upcoming exhibit last December 20.

The DFA said the Quai Branly Museum is among Europe’s premier museums dedicated to the arts and civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

It houses a collection of 400,000 objects, 700,000 photographs and 3,500 artworks on permanent display.

During the visit to the Philippines last October of French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, a bilateral agreement for the loan of Philippine artefacts was signed during a reception hosted by President Benigno Aquino III. — TJD, GMA News

Tags: anthropology, museum, archaeology