'Flor de Filipinas'at SM Malls

MANILA, Philippines - The Metropolitan Museum of Manila ushers in the long and festive Christmas season with its latest exhibit at the SM Malls, “Floral Feast, featuring a selection of 47 exquisite botanical illustrations from the pioneering book on Philippine plants, Flora de Filipinas.

Botanical illustration is a special art form in the service of scientific study. Unlike floral paintings, it places utmost importance on the accurate and detailed drawing of a flower or plant, leaving no room for artistic enhancements for the sake of aesthetics. The illustrations in Flora de Filipinas, published between 1877 and 1883, or roughly 120 ago, were made by a slew of Filipino artists, among them early Filipino masters Lorenzo Guerrero, Miguel Zaragoza and Felix Martinez.

Flora de Filipinas is the momentous undertaking of Spanish priest and botanist Father Francisco Manuel Blanco to identify and classify plants found in the Philippines. While many corrections and revisions have seen been made on the book, it continues to be regarded as a groundbreaking work on Philippine botany, an admirable artistic documentation of our local plants, and in this age of heightened awareness about the world’s fragility, an urgent reminder of our responsibility to take care and conserve our natural environment.  

Akapulko: Ringworm bush, illustrated by Francisco Domingo, lithographed by Celestino Verdaguer

Floral Feast

The show featuring selected plates from Father Manuel Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas ends the yearlong series of exhibitions created by the Metropolitan Museum of Manila for select SM Supermalls in an effort to promote art and culture to a broader audience.

The exhibit is ongoing at the Atrium of the Mall of Asia until Nov. 25. It will subsequently be shown at the SM Megamall Atrium from Nov. 26 to Dec. 11, and at The Block SM City North EDSA from Dec. 12 to 21.

To see a greater variety of Philippine and international art exhibitions, visit the Metropolitan Museum of Manila at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Complex, Roxas Boulevard, Manila. Museum days are Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

For inquiries, call 521-1517 and 523-7855, or e-mail info@metmuseum.ph.