Author Description

About the project. In the middle of 2008, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands gave a grant to the National Museum of the Philippines, for a review, examination and curation for a catalog of selections from the Philippine holdings of the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, the Netherlands, or the Museum Volkenkunde. In a sense, it was to continue a collaboration already begun by the two museums, working together within the structure of the Asia-Europe Museums Network (ASEMUS). The choice of objects included headgear and loincloths (clouts or g-strings), adornment, and objects of common use, that had been cosidered markers of cultural communities. They have been chosen to provide jump-off points for discussions of material culture that has assisted in the creation of the notion of the 'minority'. The objects are presented also as manifestations of native skills and technologies within the structure of aesthetics based on the values of Philippine ethnolinguistic communities, and to review the materials' function within the communities' routine and rituals. The endeavor also aims to add on to or update the data that accompany the objects, to put possible collection rationales in context, and to provide visual access to objects that not been seen in the country for at least a hundred years.