ACC at 60: Reason to celebrate

The Asian Cultural Council Philippines (ACCP), together with the Asian Cultural Councils (ACC) of New York, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, will celebrate anniversaries on Nov. 8, with a fundraising gala at the Manila Hotel for the ACC.

For the Asian Cultural Council of New York, the mother foundation, it will be its 60th anniversary. It was founded in 1963 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, a leading American philanthropist, to support cultural exchanges in the visual and performing arts between the United States and Asia.

Asian Cultural Council’s grants are unique because they are individually tailored based on the needs of each grant recipient. The rationale is to expand the horizons of grantees as individuals by expanding their perspectives, fostering creative growth and nurturing valuable international connections. Thus, the grants go way beyond mere travel. They offer the recipients a chance to design the nature of their grant according to their ideas. The rationale is for them to immerse themselves in a different culture, bringing to it their own vision as focus with room for change or expansion, according to their experience.

They are encouraged to take a break from day-to-day responsibilities and deadlines and open up to expanding their perspectives and integrating their learned experience into their creative practices. ACC takes care of the details.

ACC gives direct financial support to grantees as is the norm. But in addition, ACC staff advise fellows on available cultural resources and activities, prepare their itineraries, arrange housing and transportation as well as appropriate academic and research affiliations. Thus, the grantee is freed from having to go through these time-consuming efforts.

ACC began giving grants to Filipino artists early on in 1964. It has so far nurtured 300 artists from the Philippines. Among them are nine National Artists: Jose Joya, Lucresia Kasilag, Jose Maceda, Lamberto Avellana, Alejandro Roces, Francisco Feliciano, Ramon P. Santos, Alice Reyes and Kidlat Tahimik.

Alice Reyes (dance) says of her 1969 ACC grant: “The grant enabled me to see all that was possible as a performing artist and as a choreographer. And coming back here, again another fateful event, was coming here to see the launch of the Cultural Center, the Main Theater, and that was mind blowing. I had the chance to share what I had learned.”

Other well-known ACC grantees have been Roberto Chabet (museum studies), Nestor Jardin (arts administration), Chris Millado (theater), Gino Gonzales (theater design), Myra Beltran (dance), Patrick Flores (museum studies), Augusto Villalon (architecture), Leeroy New (visual arts) and Grace Nono (music).

Myra Beltran attests to the impact of the grant on an artist’s mindset: “My ACC grant came at a time when I needed to interact with like-minded artists to affirm my work. Sometimes working in relative isolation here in the Philippines, one yearns for conversations with others who are thinking in the same way, grappling with the same issues and it is empowering to meet artists thinking on the same wave length, so to speak. It was affirming, I felt accepted, I did not have to justify myself for being an artist, I was accepted for the breakthroughs I labored to make and it was a chance to laugh about the hardships with others who undergo the same.”

The grant program has expanded beyond visual arts, music, dance and museum studies to archaeology, arts administration, art criticism, choreography, conceptual arts (Leeroy New), conservatorship, film making, printmaking, installation art, new media art, photography (Wawee Navarrosa says it “forever changed my life and art practice”), video art, video conservators as well as scholarship (Stephen Acabado, PhD in Archaeology) and other fields that defy categorization. There is room for committed people in every division of arts, crafts (weaving is now considered an art), education and whatever is part of the enhanced culture of a country.

“The ACC Fellowship grant supported the early years of my research on the ecology of art practice in Asia, specifically granting the implementation of Project Glocal involving Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Taipei, Bandung, Penang and Kuala Lumpur,” explains Dayang Yraola (art studies). “This paved the way to many more collaborations in the region until the recent decade. But most importantly, it seeded the kinship that continues to nourish our communities of practice. The latest edition of The Listening Biennial, which I curated this year, is a decade-long warrant of this lasting kinship among peers.”

Eventually, recipient countries whose artists got grants established branches of ACC in their countries to raise consciousness and to gather local resources to add to the number of grantees. Thus, Tokyo ACC was born in 1983, Hong Kong ACC in 1986 and Manila in 2000.

It is essential to note that Josie Natori, the Filipino fashion icon based in New York, herself an artist (piano) and fashion designer, was a long-time member of ACC New York, culminating in her election as chair of ACC New York this year.

Natori, who is also a philanthropist in her own right and a Filipino who gives back to her country, is responsible for the coming into being of ACC Philippines, when she convinced people here that their own efforts towards arts, together with those of ACC New York, would give this country with its multitude of artistic talents only needing opportunity, the ability to give more grants to more artists. Moreover, the expansion of grants has now metamorphosed not only as an Asia-to-US journey and vice versa, but also to an Asia-to-Asia exchange, with some grantees going to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Asian countries.

Art is an integral part of every culture. It elevates its people, gives them their unique identity. Exposure to other cultures brings sensitivity and openness that bring about harmony and understanding of others.

As John D. Rockeffeller 3rd expressed it – international relations are not to be confined to political and economic terms but to include the cultural dimension, which broadens one’s own culture by knowing and accepting other cultures. In a perfect world, that should stop wars from being waged. If we can’t have that, let some of us understand it, value it and spread it to others.

Since ACCP was established in 2000, there have been 170 grants awarded, part of the 400 grants given to Filipino artists, artisans, scholars. If ACCP’s fundraising efforts succeed, it will have the resources for the future for more grantees.

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Maria Isabel Ongpin is president of Asian Cultural Council Philippines.