It began informally enough 40 years ago as one man's passion for things old and fine and beautiful. In 1960, business tycoon and industrialist Don Eugenio Lopez Sr. established the Lopez Memorial Museum in Pasay in honor of his parents. For years, Don Eugenio had collected old and rare books and maps, gathered from the finest antiquarian shops and booksellers in Europe and America who, through the years, had come to recognize the "old man" as one of their most valued clients.

Today, the library now ranks quite easily as "one of the finest in Asia," states Museum Director Mariles Ebro-Matias. The rare books include such explorer's volumes as James Burney's A chronological history of the voyages and discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean (London, 1803-1817); Bartolome Juan Leonardo y Argensola's The discovery and conquest of the Molucco and Philippine Islands (London, 1708), one of few extant copies; Pedro Chirino S.J.'s Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (Rome, 1604); and a rare gem, the institution's oldest Filipiniana work, the first edition of Belarmino's Doctrina Cristiana (Manila, 1620), translated into Ilocano by Fr. F. Lopez and printed by Antonio Damba and Miguel Saixo.

The collection currently counts some 16,000 Filipianiana titles by 12,000 authors, rare books, manuscripts, and literary works in various languages. In an essay on the collection, Serafin Quiason notes that of 215 Philippine imprints published from 1597 to 1800 in Manila and other key towns, the Lopez collection includes a formidable 21 titles.

Since 1960, however, the Museum has also been a repository of artworks collected by Don Eugenio through the years. His substantial collection of works by Paris-based Filipino artists Nena Saguil and the late Macario Vitalis may have grown from his regular visits to the city, recounts Matias, during which time Don Eugenio would choose from the artists' works and ship them home along with crates and crates of books.

Under the tutelage and guidance of renowned collector and connoisseur Don Alfonso Ongpin, Don Eugenio acquired a priceless collection of works by Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, and by the later master of light, Fernando Amorsolo. The museum now counts, as the anchor of its collection, a dazzling 38 Lunas, including the allegorical España y Filipinas (oil on wood, 1886) and the dreamy oil on wood Ensueños de Amor that pictures Luna's wife Paz sleeping. Among the 182 Hidalgos are two oil studies of the stunning La Barca de Aqueronte, considered by many to be Hidalgo's masterpiece, and the lyrical 1885 oil En El Jardin. Among the Amorsolos is an important early work, the 1942 oil on canvas Burning of the Intendència.

After Don Eugenio's death, his son Robbie Lopez continued collecting his own paintings, this time paying closer attention to the Modernists. After Robbie's death, this collection went to the Museum as a bequest, substantially beefing up the institution's collection of modern art.

It is this continuity which Matias is now trying to establish. "When I joined the Museum in 1994, I suggested to Mr. Eugenio Lopez that the library collection was excellent, but as far as the art collection was concerned, these were gaps that needed to be filled in with what was available in the market."

Thus, since 1995, upon the directive of the late Eugenio Lopez, the Lopez Museum had embarked on an acquisitions program meant, "to strengthen and round out the collection," says Matias. "Our goal is, by the end of the 21st century, to have a collection that encompasses the length and breadth of Philippine art history, with Luna and Hidalgo as starting points." Along these lines, the museum has engaged the services of respected art critic and historian Dr. Rod Paras-Perez as a consultant and authentication specialist.

At the moment, Matias says, the museum is proud of its collection of 20th century artworks, many acquired after 1995 and including paintings by Fernando Zobel, Ray Albano and recently-named National Artist J. Elizalde Navarro. Among Zobel's graphic, sophisticated canvases are the 1961 La Vision, the 1967 oil on Dialogue with a Sketch by P.P. Rubens and the 1967 Conversation, interestingly inscribed "Conversation with Lee [Aguinaldo] about a Degas sketch". The "underrated" Albano is represented by two works, Uva (oil on wood, 1982) and Where Will You Be Today (acrylic, 1979), and among Navarro's ecletic works is an untitled 1975 hanging wood sculpture washed in white and featuring found objects.

Matias is proud to reveal that the Musuem now has works by every Filipino National Artist for art except Guillermo Tolentino; the door you walk through into the Museum at the Benpres Building in Pasig, is in fact, a Napoleon Abueva. Some works also represent these modern masters in their formative stages. Thus, of special interest is a 1957 oil on canvas by H.R. Ocampo called Requiem (dedicated to Ramon Magsaysay), where his organic forms have yet to be reduced to their more mature, streamlined essence, and a 1949 Cesar Legaspi oil on canvas, Idol, with strokes that have yet to achieve the certainty and strength of his later years.

There's also a stunning 1987 Ang Kiukok (Seated Figure) from the days "before Christie's," Matias explains, an unusual AAP award-winning 1961 Chabet, and an early Arturo Luz oil on canvas, Trumpeters.

"Oh, but we still have a very long wish list, Matias laughs. "There are many things we still lack. We must focus our attention on sculpture as well. We will try to be quite comprehensive, but we know there are some things we may not be able to accomplish in this lifetime." With plans to move the Museum to the ultra-modern Rockwell Complex within the next five years, however, the Lopez Museum is certain to remain a repository of culture and art for many generations to come.

With acknowledgment to Alya B. Honasan.
Adapted from a feature in Metro Magazine by the same author.

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