FIFTY years have passed since Lopez Museum’s doors first opened and sought a public for its trove of what was then loosely imagined as “Filipiniana.” This half-a-century post-ness brings with it notions of evidence for reconsideration, looking back and ultimately, moving forward. The exhibit After the Fact at the Lopez Museum is given to questions such as “What and how did we do? Then what?”

As “after” summons appropriative gestures and attempts to establish lineage and a re-collected past, this exhibition assembles remnants of what has transpired, what is present in the collection, and what is perceived as needing attention if the museum continues to aspire to a wider breadth and substantive depth in the working narratives that its exhibitions and attendant public programs present.

In After the Fact, social realist artist Antipas Delotavo and New York-based feminist Imelda Cajipe-Endaya underscore what may have been eclipsed in the unfolding of various stories that have been articulated within the Lopez Museum over the years. Alongside their work are multimedia interventions from the one-time and still ambivalently diasporic practice of filmmaker Keith Sicat and Paris-based installation artist Gaston Damag, the latter specifically highlighting still another gnawing gap in narratives woven within the museum as generator of knowledge, that is, particularly about notions of indigeneity and origin lacing the complex relationships between lowland and highland cultures in the Philippines. After the Fact is ongoing until Sept. 18, 2010.

Lopez Memorial Museum is at the ground floor, Benpres Building, Exchange Road, Ortigas Center, Paisg. Museum days and hours are Mondays to Saturdays from 8am to 5pm, except holidays. For more info, call Fanny or Jane at (63-2) 631-2417 or visit www.lopez-museum.org