Interview Patrick Kasingsing
Images Palacio de Memoria
Hello Lex! We meet again! How do you like working from home?
It’s been a change of pace for the past couple of months since the lockdown. By midyear, I was able to go back to work with some sense of normalcy. I have been on a work-on-site arrangement four days a week, avoiding Covid-19 on a daily basis. So far, so good given the circumstances!
It’s a shame really as you get to call a revived heritage home your office. Tell us a little bit about Palacio de Memoria’s headquarters. How much work, and how long did it take for this former ancestral mansion to metamorphose into what it is now?
Palacio de Memoria is an arts and events space located in a restored pre-war mansion on the edges of Roxas Boulevard, bordering Parañaque City. It is a seven-story mansion in a 1.3-hectare property dating back to the 1930s. The house had been abandoned since the 1980s and was acquired by the Lhuillier family in 2004. Recently the house and its compound were restored and finally opened to the public in 2018. Today, The Palacio is an art center with rooms repurposed as art galleries, a whole floor for the auction house, an old carriage house for the museum, a decommissioned plane for reading archives, a rooftop bar, antiques retail shop, and another refurbished plane as a lounge. The property is also an open venue for tours and events, where one might see art, objects, and antiques of European provenance in Manila.
1945. Image of the original two-story mansion during the war. Photo courtesy of John Tewell Circa 1960s. Bayfront photo with the seven-story mansion in the background. Photo courtesy of Gray Mallovir
The house was originally built as a two-story property in the 1930s by Antonio Melian y Pavia, the third Count of Peracamps, and his bride Margarita Zóbel de Ayala, according to anecdotal reports. The mansion in colonial revival architecture survived the tragic Battle of Manila in 1945. There is a photo from the 1940s of the house with bombs detonating in the far back. There aren’t many buildings that survived the war. From stories by locals, the bayside house was used as the temporary headquarters of Lt Gen. Joseph Swing after liberating Paranaque and on-way to liberating Manila.
The archivist Lou Goupal in Manila Nostalgia narrates that the compound, which originally featured a 12-feet deep pool, was also used as the interim site for the Manila Polo Club before its relocation to Makati. When the war ended, the property was acquired by a surgeon named Dr. Francisco Villaroman who used the house for his medical practice. There were rooms built for receiving patients, a clinic, a therapeutic pool, and even a morgue, and as the doctor’s family grew into three generations until the 1980s, the five floors were added, each floor accessible through an elevator.
The restoration team was headed by the Lhuillier sisters Angelique and Camille, The Palacio de Memoria team, interior designer Miguel Rosales, and architect Michael del Prado who did a major overhaul of the whole house and its compound, ensuring that the building maintains much of the original homestead. This included the ballroom floor that ante-date the Villaroman purchase: a grand mother-of-pearl-inlaid terrazzo flooring depicting the tinikling and other folk images by National Artist for Architecture Juan Nakpil (1899-1986).
After decades of disrepair, the dark wood paneling was removed, walls were knocked down, and the rooms were reconfigured following the symmetry of Spanish Revival homes. Termite-infested wood flooring and architectural elements were replaced, the original architectural moldings cleaned up and highlighted, the wrought iron windows and door grilles scrubbed of rust and repainted, and the terrazzo flooring rid of all dirt and repolished.
You are operations and research head manager for the many pursuits of the company. What does that role entail?
With all the work that had been done before me, my job is to make sure that the memory of the house and all its collections preserve this new life, and connect them to the public and the community who might make their own memories there.
Although the position demands one to be an arts manager, I see my work as a curator in perception and practice. A curator is no longer just a specialist, expert, or connoisseur (although, could be)—I personally believe that he or she is a caretaker first and foremost. The Latin root word for curation is ‘curare’ which means “to take care”. Originally it connoted custodianship of collections, but today, to care relates to many things including conservation, content creation, collaboration, communication, and connection. So long as one person sees value (or negates it, which also implies a value) in a thing or idea, it is an exercise in curation. We do it all the time in our daily lives when we put one thing in our understanding as something worth minding. This understanding is what I come back to fulfill my duties.
My ongoing master’s degree majoring in Curatorial Studies, bachelor’s in Film & Media Studies, and minor in Poetry, and my experiences as a gallerist, museum worker, art writer, independent curator, and visual artist, are only so good in paper and have no weight without service. It is my never-ending curiosity about the many facets of the industry, what I might learn from them, and how best I can insert my own agency that defines my role.
Red Room. Photo by Andrew Chester Ong, courtesy of Palacio de Memoria Grey Room. Photo by Andrew Chester Ong, courtesy of Palacio de Memoria
What are the things you do from day-to-day? What are the usual challenges that you encounter in your work?
My work as head researcher is to continue establishing scholarship for each of the artworks, objects, and antiques in the collection for the art galleries and the museum. I am also in charge of validating the collected history and provenance of commissioned items for auctions by the research unit. A researcher is also a content creator, writing exhibition texts, artist timelines, and editing catalogs for print and digital publications associated with an exhibition for the museum, or for the auctions. Part of the goal of scholarship is to make your findings helpful to many users. Last year, I designed a tour program for the auction exhibit for the public to connect with artworks in the market that in many occasions are not accessible due to their commercial nature. You can still enjoy art even if you can’t afford it.
My role as head of operations is far more demanding than what I am used to as a researcher, however. The position requires more business aptitude, including strategizing for company policies, and goals to make sure The Palacio meets its advocacy as an arts and events center. Working with the owners, I identify the best directions for the company in terms of realistic targets for revenue and profits, but without compromising the service potential of heritage and the arts. It’s sometimes difficult to balance the two, but my role in management has taught me the value of business processes, partnerships, collaborations, and trusting team units in stabilizing what is usually a challenge in this industry that usually relies on visitorship, donations, and patronage. Following Canadian curator and professor Robert Janes: If arts institutions are creators of social capital, and are one of the few remaining to provide the public an opportunity as stakeholders in their cultural heritage, one must be able to consider the institution’s role from a custodian of cultural property to a service role, in some sort of intelligent balance. To do that, it takes some knowledge of business and budgets.
To demystify further, I am also in charge of making sure the team, including marketing, events, finance, administration, research, and warehouse, all our consultants, and I myself contribute the very best to our shared goals. At the end of the day, I make nightly rounds with our security to check if the building and artworks incur damages from tours or events, or even from their old age, as well as making sure the house, compound, and all its constituents are ready again for tomorrow.
What moments or scenarios give you great joy or get the office excited?
When you are surrounded by so much art, honestly, it can sometimes get very draining as one inevitably associates art with work. This is normal and is no cause for shame. Our brains and bodies are not wired for constant interpretation or appreciation and can get tired easily. I’ve felt this many times, especially when my energy is spent on all the mundanity of putting up an auction, or an exhibition to the dot, yet there is always time to enjoy the festivities once things are up and running.
One of my most memorable projects was Tertulia de Memoria, a weekend soiree commemorating heritage where we invited scholars and advocates for talks, and a local folk dance group from the Parañaque City community to perform. It was challenging, to say the least, to organize the two-day public event, yet at the end of the festivities, the screening of classic Pinoy films restored by the ABS-CBN Film Restoration in the grounds of the mansion, in the sunset, alfresco, was more than enough to make up for it.
I do find some repose in studying artworks, handling them, and holding them for the first time. For example, I enjoy looking for production marks in European porcelain. Depending on the design one can tell the year or decade they were made. I also like finding signatures of artists I am not familiar with in the lower corners or verso of paintings. It is like meeting artists for the first time when their names come up in the search. I especially love finding inscriptions in some religious antiques, oftentimes in the form of a letter or dedication which tells their relationship and why that object is being gifted. It makes the items seem more human to remember that they were once owned by someone who had memories ascribed to them.
Of course, there is always joy in seeing works by masters firsthand. I will not forget moments when I first handled works by Picasso, Matisse, or Dali for study. They were always just names and I never imagined I would actually have the privilege to work on these artists’ legacies. There are also a number of Spanish school oil paintings, and ivory icons from the 17th century or earlier in the museum which I admire often. It’s an indescribable feeling of awe when you are faced with something so olden. Most religious works until the 19th century did not have signatures by the artist because they believed that their works are divinely guided and so they must not take ownership of them. It’s refreshing and humbling to remember how art can be so much more than an object.
What does your office have that others do not?
There are a few heritage houses in Metro Manila and neighboring cities. Materially, for me, it is Juan Nakpil’s terrazzo flooring in mother-of-pearl that is most unique, but conceptually, one thing The Palacio has that’s worth noting is its capacity to be timeless. The Palacio harkens to a past when Roxas Boulevard was then Dewey Boulevard, where the affluent few established their seaside manors. Though living in a state of privilege, their lives, and the things they own tell of a localized story that completes our collective Filipino past and must not be ignored.
The coconut trees which used to line the bay can still be seen in the mansion’s veranda where many stood overlooking what was once the ocean. A photo from the 1960s showed seaside bathers in what is now hotels and casinos, and the house stood strong behind them. In the 1970s, Imelda Marcos, with the Public Estate Authority, initiated the reclamation of 3000 hectares of land in Manila Bay, forever changing the landscape of Manila, Pasay, and Parañaque. The house’s restoration and adaptive reuse as an arts and events center not only connects us to Manila’s complex memory but also to the possibilities of a collective future.
What is your favorite space within the Palacio? Why so?
I especially love the Red Room on the ground floor. It used to be the receiving area of the second owner Dr. Villaroman’s medical practice and is now reused as a gallery with centuries-old paintings and furniture from Spain and Portugal. The red is inspired by the pigment used as a primer in making gold frames and it is filled with just that. It is a grand space that might seem intimidating, but I remember that it was once a space where the sick came to be treated. In a way, art does the same thing.
You’re surrounded by objects of great antiquity with a beautiful stage of a space to boot. If you had the means, what piece would you wish to procure? Why this particular one?
I am a proud owner of old master prints by Rembrandt and Durer which I acquired from the auction. I have a liking for vintage prints, specifically old master prints, because of their availability and affordability compared to the artist’s paintings. Sometimes it’s saddening that not many people know these hard to find works by renowned artists in art history are available here in Manila for public viewing, or even to take home.
If I had the means, I would rather rent the Mosphil—a decommissioned 1950s Russian passenger carrier converted into an events space—for my birthday with my family and close friends. When else can you get to say you paid for a plane for the day?
Palacio de Memoria offers a multi-pronged approach to celebrating history and heritage that is admirable. Are there plans to extend the same touch to other heritage properties in need of a loving patron? Are there new experiences or business lines in the pipeline to promulgate Palacio’s aims further?
The Mosphil Lounge was refurbished only last year. It used to fly from Zamboanga to Kota Kinabalu in the early 2000s and is now one of The Palacio’s most affordable venues for intimate events. Paranaque’s history of aviation recalls the former airbase, Nichols Field, and of course the international airport NAIA. A bigger plane, one of the earliest models of Cebu Pacific, is currently in the works to be converted into a fully functioning restaurant.
Albeit the pandemic, Palacio de Memoria’s galleries and museum can be viewed via a virtual tour at the website. The auction house, Casa de Memoria, is also all online. We are open however for small groups for tours, and an intimate number of people for events. A big part of my work now actually is to make sure staff and guests follow our health protocols and guidelines, so please wear a mask and say hi when you visit!
How has being surrounded by history and art enhanced your view of both? Any surprising insights gained working amidst them? How has it shaped how you create art, as an artist yourself.
I feel quite lucky to have a profession where I can be around the things I like, doing what I love doing. It had always been a struggle for me as a professional in the arts industry to compromise my ideals with the demands of the art world system, most especially the demands of the select few in powerful positions. The art world, though it does not seem like it, is an increasingly political field. As someone who is now in a position of authority, my dedication to appreciating the complexities of art, culture, and history reminds me in my work that the humanities serve a larger purpose. The arts hold the memory of all humanity. Artefacts are material evidence of where we have been and where we are going. The stories people told in the past reverberate to our experiences today. May we never forget our capacity to be human. •
Lex as curator at curareartspace.com
