Selections from the 21st Century Art Museum (21AM) Collection

16 November 2023 - 16 November 2025

The 21st Century Art Museum’s (21AM) visual arts collection of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) features a gathering of paintings, photos, drawings, sculptures, prints, and reliefs, with a strong representation on printmaking, abstraction, experimental and conceptual art from the 1970s to the 1990s. ‘Selections from the 21st Century Art Museum (21AM) Collection’ is a continuation of the institution’s programs to promote the collection to a wider audience by assembling artworks that seek to outline the early trajectories of Philippine contemporary art from the 1960s to the 1980s. Anchored on the initial formation of the collection under the CCP Museum and MOPA and the visual thematics of illumination, materiality, nature, and spirited innovation, this exhibition is framed under two sections: ‘The Possibilities of Luminance’ and ‘Man and Nature’ to spotlight artists who defied traditional art forms and broke new grounds in the creation of conceptual, experimental, and abstract works. While demarcated between two exhibitions, the artistic practices wholly depict or deconstruct figurative and non-representational forms of art, informed by the artists’ creative expressions, gestural spontaneity, material, and personal philosophies. 

The Possibilities of Luminance (Mga Tangka ng Tanglaw) 

Gallery XXVII, National Museum of Fine Arts Galleries

‘The Possibilities of Luminance’ is anchored on the concept of brightness or luminance as an artistic expression that ties across visual characteristics and affinities found in the artworks of the CCP’s 21st Century Art Museum (21AM) collection. The term tanglaw or light connotes the visual perception and traversal of lightness and darkness. It also presents an understanding and control of light that is expressed through the intensity of its light source. As a curatorial prompt, ‘The Possibilities of Luminance’ seeks to explore the passages and evocations of lightness and darkness present in these artworks which are confined within the dense colors from black to white, or the excess or emptiness of its value. It also brings together meditations of forms and new media, such as shape, material, textures, translucency that is evocative of its time.

Man and Nature (Tao at Kalikasan) 

Gallery XXVIII, National Museum of Fine Arts Galleries 

‘Man and Nature’ is an exhibition of the CCP 21st Century Art Museum (21AM) Collection that contemplates on the visual expressions surrounding man and nature, explored through the works of select National Artists for the Visual Arts. The featured artworks include modernist and abstract art practices within the Philippine contemporary art scene between the 1970s and 1980s, and eschews pastoral and genre paintings of landscapes and scenes in everyday life, navigating their practices around portrayals of human anxiety, materiality, and our shared relationship with objects and surroundings.


Artists featured in the exhibition:
National Artist Napoleon Abueva +
National Artist Federico Aguilar Alcuaz +
National Artist Ang Kiukok +
National Artist Benedicto “BenCab” Cabrera 
National Artist Jose Joya +
National Artist Cesar Legaspi +
National Artist Arturo Luz +
National Artist Vicente Manansala +
National Artist Guillermo Tolentino +
Lee Aguinaldo +
Raymundo Albano +
Augusto “Gus” Albor 
Constancio Bernardo +
Roberto Chabet +
Mariano “Nonong” Del Rosario +
Lao Lianben
Ileana Lee
Alfredo Liongoren
Ben Maramag 
Flora Mauleon 
Romulo Olazo +
Rodolfo Samonte
Dani Sibayan 
Gerardo “Gerry” Tan 
Phyllis Zaballero 
Fernando Zobel +