Pre-colonial gold shines at Ayala Museum

The Ayala Museum is now in full swing.

Gold of Ancestors: Pre-colonial Treasures in the Philippines, its newest exhibition that originally opened in 2008, has more than a thousand archaeological gold objects that celebrates the cultures that flourished before the Spanish colonization.

The artifacts recovered, more than a thousand, are often in association with 10th- to
12th-century Chinese export ceramics.

Included in the refreshed collection are rare anthropomorphic images of deities that portray a female with raised hands. She wears an elaborate headdress with the tree of life motif framed by hooked and curled appendages.

In 1981, Ayala Foundation sponsored an archaeological project in Agusan del Norte in Mindanao. Among those recovered were articulate strands of interlocking gold beads. Under the cranium, on the right side, were two gold tubes. These and the beads formed a necklace.

Pre-colonial Philippines society had the social structure of tribes and chiefdoms. According to the Boxer Codex, while the Visayans did not have a King, each village had a chief or two called datu whose elegant attire, mostly gold, manifests prosperity, and power.

Other exhibitions at Ayala Museum are the Skeins of Knowledge, Threads of Wisdom and Ceramics and Cultural Currency: Exchanges of Pottery and Prestige. Still on view are Intertwined: Transpacific, Transcultural Philippines, Landscape into Painting: Fernando Zobel Serie Blanca, Dioramas of Philippine History, Filipinas Heritage Library's Liberation: War & Hope, Ayala Museum: In Microcosm, and the Globe Digital Gallery.

The Ayala Museum was conceptualized by Fernando Zobel de Ayala Y Montojo and established in 1967 by Joseph and Mercedes McMicking, founders of the Ayala Foundation.

To ensure safety, guests are required to have pre-booked admissions and timed entries. Limited capacity on admissions will still be practiced.
Visit ayalamuseum.org.