Jose Santos III is the first Filipino in Hirshhorn Museum
MANILA, Philippines — Quietly and without fanfare, the board of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC — the modern and contemporary art museum of the Smithsonian Institution which is the national museum of the United States — accepted the donation of the José Santos III sculpture, “The Order of Things No. 3.”
This event marked the first time that a Filipino artist, or a Southeast Asian artist for that matter, was accorded this honor.
The Hirshhorn is one of the most visited art museums in America, thanks to a series of “blockbuster” exhibitions, the latest being Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrors” which captured the public’s imagination and featured the sold-out tickets and long lines more familiar to pop-concert audiences.
The totem-like sculpture was a gift “from the Hakuta Family,” at the behest of Ken Hakuta, known to Manila cognoscenti as one of the biggest American collectors of Filipino art.
Jose Santos III’s “Order of Things No. 3”
But things are rarely as uncomplicated as that. How did this happen, one asks. Hakuta replies with a grin, “Things just clicked.” Hakuta, however, is the kind of collector whose mind is in perpetual motion, looking out not just for works of art, or even artists, but projects that he terms, “have importance or relevance to museums.”
Because there are no real accidents in international art, there had been long-standing plans for Hakuta to put together a special exhibit of Nam June Paik, widely regarded as the “father of video art” and the man who made it a certified art form and a tool for global connectivity. That landmark presentation would take place, in cooperation with the behemoth Gagosian gallery at The Armory Show, one of the oldest and, certainly, one of the most important art fairs in the United States. It was a plan brilliantly and strategically hatched by Ben Genocchio, Armory Show director, and had taken him three years to put together. Hakuta, among many other concerns, is the executor of the Nam June Paik estate and works on various projects with such museums as the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim and the SFMOMA.
Slowly a plan took shape for Santos’s gallery, The Drawing Room, to participate in the 2018 Armory Show scheduled for this last March. Thanks to an introduction made by Hakuta, Mr. Genocchio was encouraging.
Melissa Chiu of the Hirshhorn and Ken Hakuta
“The roots of the tower series started in 2009 when I made a series of paintings inspired by an otherwise nondescript ‘slit’ on my studio wall,” Santos notes. It was in his 2017 show, “It’s Never the Same,” he continues, that “the vertical format took its present form. The tower is about me. Objects that were included were all personal items hence the title, ‘47 Stories High.’”
For the Armory Show, Santos said, “I made five towers for the ‘Order of Things’ series, each measuring almost 14 by 3 feet, made from discarded materials and recycled wood. The process of building the towers emulates the Filipino mentality of ‘making do’ and finding solutions, even if they are temporary.”
“Order of Things No. 3,” writes Prof. Leo Abaya of the UP College of Fine Arts, “signifies the hope arising from the experience of navigating the chaotic streets of Manila. It features tropes culled from street signs as well as aphorisms from the iconic jeepney, stacked in a re-ordering of what is an experience laid out horizontally across the urban space.”
Detail of Santos’ artwork
Melissa Chiu of the Hirshhorn is one of the best-regarded museum directors in the United States, certainly one of its most forward-thinking. Her friendship with Hakuta goes back several years, from a Nam June Paik exhibition she had organized in New York. Hakuta has supported Chiu enthusiastically as soon as she joined the Hirshhorn and agreed to join its board in 2018. Chiu has described him as the Hirshhorn’s “best ambassador.”
A recommendation by one of the Hirshhorn curators — who had seen the artworks at the Armory during a well-timed visit arranged by Hakuta — described how the Santos columns would impact the rest of the collection in these terms: “The Order of Things No. 3 resonates with the museum’s holdings of key modernist sculpture and assemblage works such as Brancusi, Giacometti, Jasper Johns and Nick Cave. The Hirshhorn collection began with our founder, Joseph H. Hirshhorn’s interest in sculpture. This acquisition also supports our recent efforts to expand our holdings in Asian art.“ The board voted on it and the deed was done.
Pam Yan Santos and Jose Santos III
Santos was “honored and grateful,” since he said, “this doesn’t happen very often to an artist from the Philippines.”
Chiu said it best, “I am very happy with this new acquisition. It speaks to the Hirshhorn’s history. Ken Hakuta has an unusual eye for a collector and he’s been a great champion of Filipino art.”
And that is how all things serendipitous clicked.
