Locating Filipino Art in U.S. Museums: The Enduring Legacy of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

Encyclopedic museums in Europe and North America are among the most enduring products of imperialism and colonialism. Within these institutions, objects were collected to document the political and technological superiority of Britain, Spain, and the United States, among others. Conversely, the same collections sought to represent the cultural inferiority and immorality of those conquered in the global south, such as India and the Philippines. However, before the advent of the modern museum, World’s Fairs served as spaces where such ambitions were first explored, refined, and put on display.

This chapter examines the enduring legacy of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition staged in St. Louis, Missouri, arguing that the overtly racist display of the Philippines as a country populated by savage “dog-eaters” has resulted in the continuing absence of Filipino art collected or exhibited in American museums. By focusing on the Philippines exhibition, and its associative photography, advertisements and postcards from the 1904 Fair, I will demonstrate that the choice to represent the Philippines as a primitive country without culture left an indelible impression on the American imagination for generations, which would go on to impact and impede the collection, study and exhibition of Filipino art. This absence is also compounded by collectors’, art historians’ and curators’ interpretation of what constitutes “Asian art,” which has stubbornly conformed to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conventions that define art from the region as objects representing Indic or East Asian religions, or objects of imperial patronage thereby excluding much of Filipino material culture.

Original Publication Citation

Rod-ari, Melody. “Locating Filipino Art in U.S. Museums: The Enduring Legacy of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.” Teaching South and Southeast Asian Art: Multiethnicity, Cross-Racial Interaction, and Nationalism, edited by Bokyung Kim and Kyunghee Pyun, Springer International Publishing, 2023, pp. 61–80. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22516-1_4.

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