Marcos jewels in augment reality as CCP opens virtual art museum
MANILA, Philippines — 21AM is a virtual museum by Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) created to present contemporary art exhibitions that probe cyberspace, while interrogating its capabilities to alter human reality.
The museum began as a 50th anniversary project of CCP to vitalize critical imagination in the information highway.
"This is a digital entity with a vast memory encompassing the CCP's ethnographic and ethnomusicological art. It is an online presentation of its domain of art to the global arena. This 21st century contemporary museum is an intended and dedicated space of critical inquiry," revealed CCP president Arsenio J. Lizaso, during the virtual press briefing on Edsa Day.
21AM opened on the day of the 36th anniversary of the EDSA People Power event last February 25. It was meant to celebrate the new museum's mission of participating in the character and arcs of contests for truth.
"This project began with an ending - the closing of Museo ng Kalinangan - that was bridged by two rituals. So, in 2020, it became 21AM as part of the country's 100-year democratic project.
"The museum will perform an interrogatory agenda on the art market, as it holds all of CCP's inventory into a single base. With its state-of-the-art Accession Record System (ARS), the delineation between art and craft no longer exists, to make navigation easier," apprized curator Marian Pastor Roces said.
Conceptual artist Pio Abad and his wife, jeweler Frances Wadsworth Jones, are presenting their work, "The Collection of Jane Ryan and William Saunders: Restitution in Augmented Reality" as its inaugural exhibition.
The artwork references Jane Ryan and William Saunders, standing for Imelda Romualdez and Ferdinand Marcos as legal owners of a cache of jewelry of staggering value. Pegged at approximately US $20-billion, the entire cache was seized by the US government when the Marcoses landed in the United States in 1986, and later handed the same to the Philippine Commission of Good Governance (PCGG) for receivership and safekeeping; awaiting court declaration of ownership.
As the new CCP art museum, 21 AM propels the CCP and the Filipino and other artists working locally and globally in relation to Philippine material and experience, into contemporary art practice. It is informed on one hand by 21st century cosmopolitan philosophy, and on the other, by locally-generated theory as its institutional work carves centerless spaces - both digital and physical. It is for critically driven art making with Philippine substance, regardless of nationality of the artist so long as the Filipino artists are the dominant actors.
There are close to 5,000 objects being curated, with that number still rising in the years to come, so putting them all online will take time.
Art aficionados can visit the virtual museum through 21am.culturalcenter.gov.ph.
