Announcing 'Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms'

you we will celebrate in 2016 the 60th anniversary of the Asia society's founding and our founder john d rockefeller the third and his parents as well were intrepid travelers to Asia mr. Rockefeller developed a great passion for the peoples in the cultures of Asia get a deep belief in the idea that Americans need to be far needed to be far better informed than they were about Asia and about the things he saw and found he traveled to the Philippines several times in the 1950s to a nation which at the time was still ravaged obviously by the aftermath of war and mr. Rockefeller said of the Philippines and the other nations of the region the too many Americans were thinking of Asia then only as a place that was port and a place that had been beaten down by war of course both those things were true but he felt strongly that too many Americans had no idea and didn't understand much about the incredible history rich traditions in the great cultures of these countries the two words he used over and over were quote cultural understanding quote and it was to address that deficit of understanding that he founded this institution and why for sixty years we worked so hard to build bridges of understanding through all our programs in the areas of policy education and the arts and culture of all these great countries now in terms of our history with the Philippines and I've been going through this and it's remarkable how much one turns up we have hosted almost every one of the past presidents of the Philippines we've hosted your artists or business leaders I learned in some reading just last week I didn't know this when I was at the consulate that the great Philippine artisan collector Fernando's Abell addressed the Asia Society in 1961 we have a photo which perhaps we should unearth and use this fall in some way you gave a special lecture on contemporary art I learned perhaps most significant that the Rockefeller family were also the principal founders and funders of the Mex I say award which of course surely you know is known as the so-called Nobel for Asia so this is the rich tradition which this Great Exhibition will follow not just the brilliant treasures of Philippine goal also the work of contemporary video artists from the Philippines that's a new addition to our season great performers great films from the Philippines you'll hear more about those in a moment and we also hope and not to put you madam deputy secretary Consul General on the spot but we certainly hope to welcome your political leaders to the Asia Society as well during the season of a UN General Assembly would be greatly privileged and honored to have them and to show them the great exhibition so we are so excited so grateful and privileged to be hosting this art and to be bringing this rich season in this next chapter in our long history and tradition of celebrating the great people and a great nation as we all appreciate and as already recognized by our Filipino American community here the exhibit is one of the most important philippine cultural events that this side of the world has seen in many years it will feature over a hundred artifacts made of gold that showcase the wealth of the Golden Age of the kingdom of Bhutan in Mindanao the gold objects date back to the 12th century way before the Spanish colonizers came to the Philippines when the wealth and prominence of that province reached its peak the exhibit consisting of gold necklaces chains waist bands bangles ritual bowls implements and ceremonial weapons illustrates the early use of gold throughout the Philippines of course today we recognize again the partnership of three important institutions that made that made this exhibit possible first the Ayala Museum in Makati second the Central Bank of the Philippines which also wants some of the gold exhibit a gold objects that will be displayed and third of course the Asia Society which will host this exhibit for the first time here in the US of course the fourth partner here is the Philippine American community not just in the US Northeast but we're looking at the entire US mainland and this exhibit will mark for the first time in many years that Philippine culture its history heritage and skill and artistry of its people will be highlighted and celebrated in a way that is not only prestigious but one that will promote a higher level of understanding and appreciation of Philippine culture by the UN made us being stream community the Philippine American community therefore has a direct stake in making this exhibit a success I must tell you that when I was invited to help promote this Philippine gold exhibit I was very very excited because I saw it in a yellow Museum and I could not believe that this artistry of gold jewelry and artifacts were made by our ancestors in the year eleven ten eleven twelve thirteen century even before the Spaniards came and so I thank Tom and Asia Society for agreeing the present is for four months because it is like our King Tut the Egyptian king that was buried in the pyramid and discovered this one nobody knew about it until now and so thank you for the Philippine Consulate concert and deputy consul general Kira for emphasizing that it is really our responsibility the Philippine American community to bring our friends and our relatives and all our group to this exhibit and for that reason that Asia Society also agreed that during the four months it's not only the exhibit but we will have cultural presentation and you will hear about that later this exhibition is is just a starting point in some ways because it inspires us to connect with hoping culture through the ages and we're really excited about all of the programs that we have and I think all of you have a calendar of some of the events that we've got planned and you'll see that there are programs that involve children there are programs that involve myyy theatres and Jorge or tolas here can you wave your hand for us here at the Asia Society this work is you know a continuation of our relationship with the Philippine community and in fact we have worked with my ye theatre since the year 2000 when we did a piece a theater piece that we Co presented and we have worked over the years and were really thrilled that they are creating a new piece called a LeMat which is about legends of gold and which will look at different views and bring some of the wonderful theatre artists here as you can see we also have an exciting opening week in which we will have gala dinners we will have performances some extraordinary opera singers bringing a Night at the Opera Philippine style and some incredible voices I'm not going to go through all of these although we will have time for a QA but I do want to say how excited we are here at the Asia Society to be a part of the Filipino American community and a lot of part of the larger Philippine community and its really as Tom Nagurski mentioned our mission but it's more than our mission it's really our passion so thank you for inviting us to be part of this larger family and to be able to bring together so many incredible artists political figures filmmakers into bringing this celebration to the Asia Society and to New York City the Ayala museum Philippines is pleased to partner with Asia Society in Co organizing this groundbreaking exhibition from September 11 the year 2015 to January 3rd 2016 I say groundbreaking for the material in the exhibition is largely unknown outside the Philippines in fact these rare treasures are something of a revelation even within the Philippines over the last 40 years important gold objects have been found throughout the archipelago but oh sorry yes but largely hidden from the public view due to security concerns so I'm showing you a distribution map of where these gold objects were recovered else you seized throughout the archipelago the exhibition's goal is to shed light on the ancient kingdom of butuan in northeastern Mindanao Island during the 10th to the 13th centuries we also want to include some of the early polities and chiefdoms in the neighboring islands in the zone and the Visayas as you see here marked on the map but the most spectacular gold finds were actually found in the northeastern part of Mindanao in 1981 in the betwen serega area see here where there is a heavy concentration of gold mines near the site of the ancient kingdom of butuan the a young museum's collection which forms the core of the exhibition was originally assembled by Leandro and Cecilia looks in from the 1960s to 1981 alongside their well known Asian export ceramic collection other important objects will be on loan from the Central Bank of the Philippines the Lilly library Metropolitan Museum of Art music a blondie in Paris and the Lockean family the most spectacular objects in the forthcoming exhibition are from this astonishing discovery in 1981 which is now called the Segal treasure exquisite gold objects such as you see here were part of an ancient goal of a cache of ancient gold works that were accidentally discovered during a government irrigation project near the present-day city of Bhutan I must say that when Nina came to me to present the idea of this exhibition and the idea that we might have the opportunity to work together as Co curators I had no idea that there was this incredible material in the Philippines and the more I looked at it the more excited I became because not only does it show these flourishing civilizations in the Philippines that as somebody educated about Asian art in the United States I had absolutely no idea about but it also clearly showed that there were these incredible trade maritime trade interactions going on that involve the Philippines and my own special area of specialization is China and I saw that there were clear links of chat with China but also other parts of Southeast Asia and also South Asia India this is amazing amazing stuff and as Nina said it's a groundbreaking show and I think it's really going to open eyes here in the United States I hope that in the future that that the story of the Philippines is going to enter the the education system here that teaches people about about the development of Arts and Asia because this is an important part of that history that's really been missing for us we couldn't be more honored than to work with Loida and DARS Howe and the entire team and a consulate Thank You Consuela and everyone to really bring Philippines front and center for the New York community and indeed the global community how fabulous is this collection how fabulous is the Philippines I've had a lot of experience in the Philippines I've seen the Philippines people very up close in my past role as head of the United Nations World Food Program and that is the agency in the world that is responsible when disaster hits or war hits to go in and make sure people don't starve to death and so my introduction to the Philippines was meeting some of the most amazing generous patient people on the frontlines of disasters after cyclones hit I just want to tell you one story which I haven't told Lloyd yet because to me it's what is the heart of the Philippines so after one of the great typhoons hit we went in and north of Manila everything was flooded and Kacey Concepcion was our ambassador for the World Food Programme helping us and we went and literally I had to go in a boat to meet people and find out who didn't have food and what we could do and do a huge food operation for about a million people and and we gathered in one place and and then went out on this boat and there was a family and the water was up to the top of the table but they're all seating around the table having a meal and they saw our boat and they said oh the World Food Program this is our last meal and we can't leave here and they were eating it with such dignity and we said oh we're so sorry we're just doing an operation to see where the hungry we don't have food right now they said oh you don't have food come share with us let us feed you to me that was the heart of the Philippines or people who when the chips are down there is a smile and the generosity and this is what we've met through all of you with this team we're so proud of this collection of gold pre-colonial gold it really tells a story of the Philippines that I don't think the world has known and we're so proud to work with all of you and also to celebrate the Philippines to bring the Philippines in front and center here so we'll do a lot of other programming you'll hear from Rachel Cooper want to bring every dimension of Philippines life and policies and presence in the world to front and center so one of my heroes in the world is Manny Pacquiao as you know he's a great fighter for against hunger he grew up very difficult circumstances but he symbolizes a lot to me including that you know don't ever let anyone say you can't make your mark in the world in a big way and so we hope this season will really bring Philippines and represented to the world in a very exciting way okay is there a plan among our colleagues at the University of the Philippines to conduct further research on the material when we first opened the permanent collection at the Ayala museum we had several previews inviting our academic colleagues from various universities including the University of the Philippines the archaeology department there to encourage the professors the archeologists and the students to study the collection and conduct further research on the technology the iconography and situating it in historical context within the context of early southeast asia we also the National Museum of the Philippines also has been excavate around the areas where many of these cold objects were found now the challenge is always facing the National Museum is funding so there have not been as many excavations as we would have wanted one of the earlier excavations were funded by the Locsin foundation but the good news is there's actually a current excavation ongoing in booth one headed by Mary Lewis balunia of the National Museum who has found another boat in addition to the eleven boats that are found in 1976 and they have found this large so-called mother boat that's probably twice as large and it's believed to have been the boat that actually carried the cargo with the smaller boats as you know accompanying subsidiary boats during the trade we will be inviting a Mary Mary Jane balunia to a symposium that were organizing in October and perhaps Adriana might want to say a few more share a few more details about the symposium in our hopes for subsequent repercussions from the symposium yeah the the symposium is going to be a interdisciplinary symposium and will include a number of scholars who work have been working not only on on the gold in the Phillipines itself but also who specialize in in gold production in Southeast Asia and Indonesia in particular and also in China it will be an attempt to bring together a group of scholars from different areas to start to make more robust conversation among scholars who specialize in different areas who have an had the opportunity to really sit down and talk about about this gold and and what the implications are and that's an that's a symposium that will be of course of interest a specialist but it's also open to the public and we hope as many people as possible will will come in and learn and on behalf of Josette Sheeran our president and Tom degorski our vice president we are so pleased to be involved with the Filipino community we see this not only as a fall program we see this as a relationship that we want to continue well into the future and to grow it and to get to know everyone better and to learn how we can serve this community better what's so interesting about Asian society is that we look around the world today at issues and people and we connect both people and ideas but we also look back in time to look at where we've all come from and what we've become and culture is part of us it's our identity it's our memory and through it it's our continuing imagination so I thank all of you who have been involved in this those of you are helping us in sponsorship ways to bring this whole program together Loida to you and your colleagues and your wonderful wonderful team thank you everyone and thank you for being with us and we hope to see you often here in the fall and beyond thank you

Channel: Asia Society

Views: 776,198

Rating: 4.7791052 out of 5

Keywords: Josette Sheeran (Politician), Peggy Loar, Asian Art (Field Of Study), Loida Nicolas Lewis, Ayala Museum, Rachel Cooper, Museum (Building Function), Art (Quotation Subject), Treasures of Forgtten Kingdoms, gold, Philippines (Country), Philippine Gold, Tahiat Mahboob, Asia Society Museum, Dr. Nina Capistrano-Baker, asia society, Adriana Proser, Tom Nagorski, Kira Azucena, History (TV Genre)

Id: zbMtY_gwQYc

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2015