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Penman No. 452: A Cultural Treasure Chest

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Penman for July 9, 2023

A NEW book launched last month by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas once again brings up how unlikely—and yet in a way also how logical—it is for a nation’s central bank to be the repository and protector of the country’s cultural heritage. 

Simply titled Kaban (treasure chest), the sumptuous 340-page book offers a guided tour of the BSP’s fabled cultural collections, from pre-Hispanic gold to contemporary art, with each section curated by experts in the field. The book’s writers include Portia Placino, Victor Paz, Dino Carlo Santos, Clarissa Chikiamco, Tessa Ma. Guazon, and Patrick Flores; I contributed a preface, from which I quote some excerpts below. 

Banks represent resources, stability, and continuity, and central banks even more so, for the financial sector. They will often purchase art for décor, and perhaps even for investment; but they will not routinely spend vast amounts on the acquisition, storage, and exhibition of valuable cultural artifacts, as the BSP (and its predecessor, the Central Bank) has done.

Only inspired and visionary leadership can achieve this fusion between the seeming banality of money and the transcendence of art. The Central Bank and BSP have had the good fortune of being led at various times by men who embodied this integration—among them, the CB’s founding father Miguel Cuaderno, a lawyer with a passion for history, culture, and art.

Decades later, Cuaderno was followed at the Central Bank by Jaime Laya—a banker, accountant, writer, collector, and cultural administrator. It was under Gov. Laya that the Central Bank embarked on its most ambitious acquisitions and began to be known for minding more than the nation’s money, but its cultural heritage as well.

Cuaderno and Laya were supported by the likes of Benito Legarda, at one time the Central Bank’s head of research, who was not only an economist but also an avid numismatist and historian who initiated the Money Museum, which became the base for the bank’s later forays into other areas of culture.

The release of Kaban—following a series of other beautifully produced books about the precious objects in its collection—highlights the value accorded by the BSP to the idea of wealth: its generation, propagation, and preservation, which is, after all, the core business of banks. But this isn’t just flaunting wealth for wealth’s sake, an exercise in ostentation and in investment by the numbers. 

The BSP collection is imbued with historical and cultural value, and the objects in its catalogues—from ancient coinage and currency to contemporary art and furniture—are physical embodiments of the things and notions we hold dear, our sensibilities and aspirations as a people, the heritage and the legacy we want to pass on down the generations. It is another bank, a cultural bank, but one whose elements have been carefully chosen and curated to reflect our finest traditions and brightest memories.

It’s interesting and important to note that the BSP is not alone in this extracurricular preoccupation. Beyond the Philippines—where many other banks and financial institutions have been known for their impressive art collections and generous support for culture—banks around the world have associated themselves with art, amassing stupendous collections and employing art to project a positive and more humane image of what most people might otherwise see as cold and soulless financial corporations. Indeed, Professor Arnold Witte of the University of Amsterdam calls banks “the new Medici,” referring to the Renaissance’s most important patron of the arts, Lorenzo de Medici, not incidentally himself a banker. 

Among the world’s most important art collections held by banks, that of the Banco de España in Madrid goes back to the late 15th century and forward all the way to contemporary sculpture and photography. The Swiss UBS holds 35,000 pieces of modern art. JP Morgan Chase, the Bank of America, the Royal Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank, and the Societe Generale have also been leaders in the field. 

Central banks have also been known for their art collections, although their origins, sourcing, and contents vary. According to a report by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, “In the US, the Federal Reserve’s fine arts program was established in 1975 by Chair Arthur Burns in response to a White House directive encouraging federal partnership with the arts. Unlike other collections, the Fed relies on donations of artwork or outside funds to purchase works of art. 

“Most European central banks’ art collections consist mainly of paintings, but this is not a global trend. In Colombia, Costa Rica and the Philippines for example, the central banks are also home to museums with exhibits ranging from archaeological treasures to medieval goldwork and pottery.

“The central banks of Colombia, Austria and South Africa, among others, host catalogues of their collections on their websites. The Central Bank of Iran’s website hosts a video documentary on the Crown Jewels collection. Many other central banks including Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands and the Philippines have physical catalogues of their collections, though these have not been digitalized.” It quoted then Governor Amando Tetangco as saying that “The BSP ensures that outstanding examples of Filipino genius in its gold, art, and numismatic collections are shared with the people through exhibits, books, CDs, social media, and provincial lectures.”

This puts the BSP in the fine company of other central banks that have recognized the special relationship between monetary and cultural wealth, and the importance of preserving heritage for the future. If, as Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge yields the best interest,” then an investment in cultural heritage cannot yield any less, as it shows us at our best, for all time.

The arts, indeed, are another treasure trove of spiritual resources needing constant care and replenishment. This long, historic, and mutually beneficial partnership between our central bank and the arts sector makes that reality physically manifest, and we can only hope that it will continue even more strongly in the decades to come.

Tastefully photographed and designed by Willie de Vera and produced by Bloombooks (the publishing arm of Erehwon Arts Corporation), Kaban is a treasure on its own, and is available for sale to the public at the BSP.

Qwertyman No. 18: The Excavation

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 5, 2022

PRISONER Q felt his shovel bite into the soil with what sounded like a sigh of satisfaction. It had rained, and the earth was dark and soft and yielded without complaint. Beside him, his fellow inmates attacked the job with gusto, happy to be outside under an overcast sky instead of stewing in their cells and taking turns napping, because of the limited space. The mayores or cell block leaders could, of course, sleep anytime; they even had bunks to stretch out on while everyone else languished on the floor or stood up against the railings. 

As an agurang or elder, Prisoner Q enjoyed a few privileges—he got into the front of the line at mealtimes, although he ate the same sweaty rice and slurped the same dishwater soup, and now and then he got a pack of cigarettes from his mayor or (he was told) even the warden himself because he could write in English and could draft special requests or letters of appeal, but otherwise, especially to the outside world, he was just one of them, another mouth to feed at the state’s expense.

So everyone was surprised when Prisoner Q volunteered to join the excavation detail that the warden ordered to be put together for a special project in a vacant lot toward the back of the prison. It wasn’t his body they questioned—he had stayed fit over the 14 years he had been in prison, and was in better shape than when he came in—but his mind. These labor details were usually assigned to newcomers who needed to be broken in, who needed to be jerked out of the utak-laya mindset they clung to with their fingernails. It was backbreaking work, and more than one inmate had collapsed from exhaustion or sunstroke. Many assumed that Prisoner Q merely wanted a change of scenery, a change of pace to ward off buryong, the prison blues that led to slashed wrists and, worse, running amok and causing mass mayhem.

They also wondered what all the digging was for, and why the warden didn’t just bring in a backhoe to do the job. At first it had seemed like all they were digging was a ditch, but it grew bigger and deeper by the day and by the week, until it was the size and depth of a swimming pool. And still they dug on for up to ten hours a day, their meals brought down to them, with a makeshift latrine in a corner for their immediate needs. The dig turned up old beer and soft-drink bottles, ceramic shards, a scorched wristwatch, and Army-issue spoons and forks, but nothing of extraordinary value, except for a silver ring that had lost its stone. Whatever they found was laid out on the surface on a white cotton bedsheet, and now and then the warden came by to inspect and to collect the more interesting pieces, tossing the rest back into the maw of the excavation. Sometimes the warden consulted a map that he had on his phone, which no one else could see, and measured distances. Rumors began to spread that the warden was after treasure, that he had gotten hold of a wartime Japanese map that indicated the presence of at least part of Yamashita’s marvelous loot in this particular quadrant of the prison. 

One day Prisoner Q dug up the head of a bisque doll, half of its face badly burnt. Its one good eye stared at him, and he threw it away. And then from a few inches deeper emerged the skeletons, a whole tangled mass of them, as if they had chosen to die together in some conflagration. A scrap of cloth bore a flowered print; the heel was peeling off a man’s shoe. The news of the bones’ discovery hardly caused a stir in the penitentiary, where corpses of even more recent vintage turned up all over. The warden picked through the bones like they were cattle, and pulled a thin gold ring from a finger. He ordered Prisoner Q’s gang to put the bones in the trash and to resume digging. Prisoner Q cradled the three skulls in his arms and set them down carefully on the wheelbarrow; one of them had a gaping hole on the right; another had lost its jaw. He wondered what kind of violence could have led to such a catastrophic end. He had seen terrible things done to people and to bodies in prison, and he had almost forgotten what violence meant. He felt impervious to injury.

That night, lying on his back, Prisoner Q’s thoughts drifted off to what it was like to sleep again on a soft bed with freshly ironed sheets and with a woman breathing evenly beside him, and much as he wanted to quench the thought, it grew, seemingly on its own, in his imagination. This was the utak-laya he had successfully suppressed within his first three years, making him forget the family he had forbidden from visiting him in prison; his share from the last robbery would take care of their needs for life, and last he heard they had a farm in Casiguran, facing another ocean. 

The woman lying next to him soon had a son of about six, who rode a red bicycle and was crazy about cars. When Prisoner Q offered him a car he had crafted out of a sardine can and bottlecaps, the boy turned away. Prisoner Q followed the boy to his room and saw how it overflowed with toys of all kinds—robots, guns, planes, and of course cars—and he jumped in surprise when a blue sportscar zipped between his feet and ran away, and the boy holding the remote control laughed gleefully. Then the woman came in and said, “It’s time for merienda. I made some biko and hot chocolate.” Biko, he tried to think, biko? The sticky rice clung to his palate and he could smell and taste the coconut milk in it, and he was smiling when he was shaken awake by a foot in his ribs, nudging him to get up. The dream exploded in his brain, and he tried to hold on to parts of it—that whiff of coconut, the boy’s taunts—but they came away in shreds. He wanted to lash out at the man who had woken him up, but it was just his friend Teroy, claiming his space on the floor.

That morning they dug some more, and then they ran out of earth, and hit solid adobe on which their spades were useless. No treasure could have been buried deeper than this virgin rock. The warden cursed at his misfortune and called the digging off. Prisoner Q’s grief was even greater; he was still scraping away at a hole that had opened up inside of him, and he could not stop.