Author: National Museum of the Philippines

To conclude the series on the celebration of the feast of Santo Niño this month, the #NationalMuseumPH introduces another festival, the Pasalamat Festival – a festivity commemorating the arrival of the Santo Niño image in the Philippines and in Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur in Western Mindanao. 

Like the Kahimunan Festival of Butuan City and the Sakay-Sakay Festival of Maasin City, Pasalamat Festival is held during the 3rd week of January. From the word “pasalamat”, the festival is held to give thanks for the blessings they have received throughout the year. The 500^th anniversary of the arrival of the Santo Niño image in the Philippines was celebrated in 2021, making it the oldest Catholic icon in the country. 

The festival’s highlight is a fluvial parade (regatta), along with trade exhibitions, as well as Mutya ng Pagadian City. However, the majority of the festival’s activities were canceled from 2020 to 2021 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A motorcade was held in place of a procession and the number of people allowed to hear novena masses was also set to a minimum in 2021. The same activity was held on January 6, 2022 wherein an image of the Sto. Niño was paraded from the city center to the Sto. Niño Cathedral Parish Church.

Last January 15, 2022, the vibrant ritual dance showdown featuring street performers and festival queens holding the image of the Santo Niño in different garbs were held. With the ongoing pandemic, only fully vaccinated participants and guests were allowed to participate. Physical distancing was observed and the performers could only remove their masks during their presentation. 

Ever wondered why the majority of the Sto. Niño festivals are held in January when the image supposedly arrived first in Cebu on April 1521? One of the known reasons for this is that Rome granted the Philippines special permission to celebrate the feast of Sto. Niño every 3rd Sunday of January.  Perhaps you may have some ideas too? Let us know and follow the #NationalMuseumPH for more features about our rich and colorful celebrations. 

#PasalamatFestival

#PagadianCity

#SantoNiño

#PhilippineFestival

Text and poster by the NMP Ethnology Division

Photo courtesy of the Asenso Pagadian Facebook Page (City Public Information Page of the Local Government of Pagadian)

© The National Museum of the Philippines (2022)

The #NationalMuseumPH celebrates the 112^th birth anniversary of National Artist Vicente Silva Manansala, born #OnThisDay in 1910.

Macabebe, Pampanga-born and 1981 National Artist for Painting, Vicente Silva Manansala was the son of Perfecto Manansala and Engracia Silva. He spent his childhood in Intramuros, Manila and grew up with fellow artists Antonio Dumlao and Jose Alcantara. He worked as a newsboy, a distributor of programs in movie houses, and a billboard painter. He also took drawing lessons under Ramon Peralta (1877-1940), a renowned scenographer.

In 1930, he earned his fine arts degree at the University of the Philippines. After college, he worked as an illustrator for the Philippines Herald. He formed associations with Carlos ‘Botong’ Francisco, Cesar Legaspi, and Hernando Ocampo, who would eventually become National Artists. After almost two decades, Manansala received a UNESCO scholarship grant to study at Ecole de Beaux Arts in Montreal, Canada for six months. In 1950, he went to France and studied at the University of Paris under a French government scholarship. He was mentored by French artist Fernand Léger who advised him to simplify the shapes and colors in his works. He eventually rendered figures and objects and simplified them into basic geometric shapes while applying layers of colors. This style, which he pioneered and developed, is called transparent cubism. 

His renowned subjects include Philippine urban and rural themes, the Filipino family, mother and child, woman, chickens, and carabao (water buffalo). Exhibited at The Philippine Center New York (PCNY) Core Collection of 1974: A Homecoming Exhibition located in Galleries XXVII to XXVIII of the National Museum of Fine Arts (NMFA) is his 1965 watercolor entitled “Kalabaw.” This is the only work of Manansala on display in this exhibition gallery. 

Manansala died on August 22, 1981, in Makati City.

You may view other works of National Artist Vicente Manansala at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Hall, the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) Northwest Hall, and the PHILAM Life Hall. These are all found on the Third Floor of the National Museum of Fine Arts.  Check the 360 Tour of the PCNY Homecoming Exhibition on this website, or reserve a slot for your visit.

Text and photo by NMP-FAD

#VicenteManansala

#OnThisDay

#MuseumFromHome

©National Museum of the Philippines (2022)

Did you know that stingrays have teeth?

This week’s #DignayanBiyernes features a tiny yet fascinating piece of fossil from the National Paleontological Collection. Let us learn today about the fossilized teeth of a stingray.

This small piece is a fragment of a stingray tooth. It was collected by #NationalMuseumPH researchers from Candoni, Negros Occidental in 2017. This collection was part of the joint fieldwork of the NMP and paleontologists from the National Museum of Nature and Science in Japan. It was found together with many other marine fossils like coral fragments, oyster shells, and various clams and snails. 

In other countries, fossils of stingray teeth are very common. Oftentimes, they are found together with shark teeth. A complete skeleton fossil of a stingray however is quite rare. They are mostly from the older or extinct species of stingray. 

Stingrays are cartilaginous fishes like a shark. This means that their skeleton is not made of bones but cartilage. They are generally marine creatures from tropical or subtropical regions. Their teeth are modified scales that are regularly replaced. Today, different stingray species are becoming more threatened and vulnerable to extinction. The IUCN listed the common stingray as a vulnerable species while a few other species are in much more critical status. 

Find this fossil and more at the Life Through Time Galley of the NMNH. Book your tour through this website.

#MuseumFromHome

#StaySafe

#BeatCOVID19

Text and image by the NMP Geology and Paleontology Division

© National Museum of the Philippines (2022)

As part of our #MuseumFromHome series highlighting the festivals related to the feast of the Santo Niño, your #NationalMuseumPH features the Sakay-Sakay Festival of Maasin City in Southern Leyte. The festival, held every 3rd Sunday of January, consists of a fluvial parade, street dancing competitions and other festive events. 

The celebration traces its origin to the Sinulog Festival commemorating the arrival of the Holy Child’s image to the Philippines when it was gifted by Ferdinand Magellan to Queen Juana, the wife of Rajah Humabon, in 1521. As the celebration of the feast of the Santo Niño spread across the Visayas region, Maasin City held their own version of “sinulog” through the Sakay-Sakay Festival. In the past, the street dancing activities were confined to the city center and culminated in the plaza before the celebration evolved to its current form. 

The Sakay-Sakay Festival now highlights a fluvial parade starting at the Maasin City port, where bancas and pump boats, garbed with colorful banners, flaglets and various images of the Santo Niño, compete against each other for the best decoration. Aboard these boats, dancers sway to drumbeats while carrying small images of the Holy Child. Other activities include the coastal decoration, face painting, and the street dancing competition highlighting an elegantly garbed ‘festival queen’ carrying the image of the Santo Niño during the performance.

With the onset of the pandemic, the local government has canceled the customary activities of the Sakay-Sakay Festival to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection. As a safer alternative, they held the Sakay-Sakay Festival Throwback Photo Contest in 2021 as a way to keep the spirit of this important event alive among the Maasinhons. 

#SakaySakayFestival 

#MaasinCity 

#SantoNiño

#PhilippineFestival

Text and poster by the NMP Ethnology Division 

Photo courtesy of the City Tourism Office of Maasin

In our #MuseumFromHome series, this week’s feature of our #BuiltTraditionThursday is the People’s Museum and Library of Bayombong, formerly the Old Provincial Capitol Building of the province of Nueva Vizcaya, an Important Cultural Property of the Municipality of Bayombong.

The structure that would come to be known as the People’s Museum and Library was built in 1906, burned in 1926 but was restored, and then rebuilt and renovated after World War II in 1945 to serve as the “Capitol Offices of Nueva Vizcaya”. The property also served to house several ancillary support facilities including Trial Courts, Fiscal Offices, and banking operations. The current structure remains that of the 1945 restoration, and it was adaptively reused from a Capitol Building into the People’s Museum and Library of Bayombong, when a new Capitol was built in 1993. 

A two-storey building, the Museum and Library is located on a lot measuring approximately 1400 square meters and having a building footprint of around 22.15 by 21.9 meters (485 square meters), the lot is bounded by Capt. Dela Cruz Street to the east, Sto. Domingo street to the north, and Burgos Street to the west. The building is also adjacent to several prominent landmarks, including the Children’s Park and the Cathedral of St. Dominic and its adjoining plaza. 

Though rebuilt well into and past the American colonial period in 1945, the Museum and Library building was restored in keeping with the Spanish colonial influence of its original design. Features such as massive brick walls, wood paneling, and capiz shell windows typical of Spanish era structures (particularly those of the bahay-na-bato) in the Philippines remain intact. In its current capacity, the property maintains a repository of artefacts and documents depicting the social, cultural, political, religious, military, and educational life of the Novo Vizcayanos; including but not limited to anthropological dioramas, local and ethnic products and methods, and archival records. 

In more recent history, due to the ever-present challenge of disaster risk management for heritage structures, the provincial government of Nueva Vizcaya has initiated efforts for protection development programs and preventive maintenance for the People’s Museum and Library of Bayombong. This conscious effort was catalyzed by the onslaught of category-4 Typhoon Ulysses in November 2020, and spurned on by Typhoon Odette in December 2021. This development project promises the safeguarding of the Important Cultural Property through faithful restoration and modernization with respect for the structure’s-built heritage. 

Text and illustrations/photos by Ar. Armando Arciaga III, AABHD 

The #NationalMuseumPH celebrates the 94th birth anniversary of Mauro Malang Santos, who was born #OnThisDay in 1928, by featuring his painting “Panuelo” from the Philippine Center New York (PCNY) collection. 

Signed “Malang, 22-10-73”, this oil painting is among the 115 out of the 120 works of art from the core collection of the PCNY. It is currently on exhibition at The Philippine Center New York (PCNY) Core Collection of 1974: A Homecoming Exhibition located in Galleries XXVII to XXVIII of the National Museum of Fine Arts (NMFA). 

At the core of this artwork is a lean figure of a woman with an elongated neck and tiny feet. On the figure’s right shoulder hangs a pañuelo, painted in red, pink, and earth tones. A pañuelo is a square cloth worn to cover shoulders. The artist’s renowned subjects included female vendors, barung-barong (informal urban settlements), mother and child, churches, and everyday scenes.

Born in Santa Cruz, Manila, he used Malang as his artistic signature to honor his mother, who had it as her maiden name. He took drawing lessons under Teodoro Buenaventura (1863-1950) and studied at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts. He won awards in the annual art competitions of the Art Association of the Philippines, Society of Philippine Illustrators and Cartoonists, and the Art Directors Guild. In 1963, he was among the Ten Outstanding Young Men awardees and the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining awardee in 1995. In 1981, the City of Manila conferred Malang with the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award for his significant contribution to Philippine Art. 

The artist died in 2017. He was 89 years old. 

The National Fine Arts Collection has several works of Malang namely: Mother and Child (1973, Gouache on canvas), Sampaguita Vendor (93/249) [Undated, Serigraph on paper], Yellow Plant (1983, Tempera on panel), Still Life (1985, Pastel on paper), and his gouache palette shot-glasses mounted on plywood.

You may view this painting and his other work, “Brown Head,” also from the collection of the PCNY by booking online through this website. For those who wish to #StayAtHome, you may click this link for the 360-virtual tour of the PCNY Homecoming Exhibition: https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/pcny360/HTML5/pcny360.html

#MauroMalangSantos

#OnThisDay

#BeatCOVID19

#MuseumFromHome

Text and photo by NMP FAD

© National Museum of the Philippines (2022)