MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines (UP) has opened an exhibition of artwork sequestered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) after the fall of the dictatorship in 1986.
The PCGG Artwork Collection: Objects of Study was opened to the public by appointment at the UP Vargas Museum in Diliman, Quezon City, starting Tuesday.
The exhibition consists of works from Italy, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia which were sequestered by the PCGG from a hoard of coins traced back to the family of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.
Created by the late former President Corazon Aquino in 1986, the PCGG is the government agency tasked with recovering the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family and its cronies.
Among those sequestered by the PCGG were jewelry and artwork purchased with public funds, including those found at the Metropolitan Museum in Manila designed by former first lady Imelda Marcos.
“Since then, a number of paintings, including those of Botticelli, Raphael and Titian, had been sold by the PCGG at auction, with proceeds going to land reform. But some pieces remained,” the UP Vargas museum said.
President Marcos has yet to issue a directive regarding the future of the PCGG.
Meanwhile, UP Diliman will also be offering several Martial Law topics in the upcoming school year.
The UP Film Institute has announced that it will offer four courses on Martial Law and Film, which will be open to all UP Diliman students.
Among these courses are “Semiotics of Martial Law and Cinema”, which will be taught by Professor Nick Deocampo; “Horrors!” by Professor Ed Cabagnot; and “Martial Law and Pinoy Cinema, Noon at Ngayon”, under the direction of Professor Sari Dalena.
Former UP College of Mass Communication Dean Roland Tolentino will teach a seminar on “Cinema, Martial Law, and Historical Revisionism.”
The UP Journalism Department will also offer a topic for journalism majors on “Martial Law and the Press”, which will be taught by Professor Ma. Diosa Labiste.
“The course will discuss the experience of the media under the Marcos dictatorship, which was the time of censorship, arrests, imprisonment and murders of journalists. It will also cover the emergence of the alternative press, also known as the mosquito press or the anti-Marcos press,” reads the topic description.