STUDENTS and lovers of geography, history, politics, art and education will delight in Lopez Memorial Museum’s exhibits showcasing rare maps in one and school texts in the other. Maps are not just physical but charged political delimitations of territory. The maps in the Lopez Museum collection, including a 1734 Murillo Velarde map of the Philippines, books on cartography, and memorabilia items of Jose Rizal are featured in the exhibit Coordinates at the Rare Books gallery.

As noted in the “History of Cartography,” maps are not just artifacts but graphic representations that communicate through their shapes, sizes, orientation, position and relation of the different masses. Viewers are asked to look at these markers in light of their original purpose, modes of production and context of use to recognize how these delineate what is within and what is without, what is ours and what is not, what is “we” and what is other. Maps promote spatial understanding of the world, including one’s place in it as city dweller, national and kin to others living in an imagined region of commonality and shared desires.

At the Library, Tutelage assembles school texts and their accompanying images crafted by a generation of artists represented by Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo. Focus is given to books from the American colonial and Commonwealth periods and the early Philippine Republican administrations, as these espouse the different views of the function of education and issues arising from it. The exhibit also features works by sculptor Ikoy Ricio.

 

 

LVN photos, Raya Martin in ‘Double Take’

Double Take, curated by Chit and Eileen Ramirez, features works from the museum’s permanent collection, LVN archival photographs and a video installation by the featured artist, director Raya Martin. Martin holds a BA in Film and Audiovisual Communication, cum laude, from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, and a BA in Journalism from UP Baguio. His latest works, “Independencia” and “Manila,” were shown at the Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2009.

The three exhibits will run until September 25, 2009.