The Fine Art of Letting Go
Andrew Gonzalez, FSC

This happy occasion marks another significant step
forward in our concerted efforts to retrieve our heritage
and to conserve our past through the final turnover of the
DM Guevara Foundation collection, a fine collection of the
late nineteenth century ilustrado lifestyle to the Museo De
La Salle.

In my travels across the globe, which in my youth always
included visits to the city’s great collections of art and
artifacts, I have come to conclude from simple observation
some insights I would like to share. I would like to gather
these insights into a theme which I would like to entitle
“The Fine Art of Letting Go.”

Practically all the great collections of the world in art and
in lifestyle pieces have been made possible through the
efforts of individual collectors, two of whom were Domingo
and Carmen Guevara, after whom the DM Guevara
Foundation has been named. There are many other fine
collectors who have shared their precious time and talents
and resources with us.

It takes imagination, creativity, good taste to choose
selectively what is worth collecting in preserving our past
and if we are just beginning to do this as a society, in
retrieving it. The means to acquire these collections must
likewise be available but more important are not just the
means but the dedication and love which go into the
collection. Not all people are gifted with this talent and
this perseverance; it demands exposure to the beautiful
and the lasting in our past, time to rummage through
disposable items to look for valuable and what is worth
preserving, and a persevering will to acquire this for one’s
collection. To me this is a real talent and a gift, borne not
only of good taste but love for the past, which these
objects stand for.

Perhaps one of the most fulfilling accomplishments of a
lifetime is the process and the results of this care and
concern to retrieve and to preserve the past, which
constitutes so much a part of our identity, of who we are.
One collects, makes sacrifices to acquire this collection
and to exchange items with equally dedicated and
generous aficionados, to catalogue them, and them to
display them not only for one’s pleasure and satisfaction
but to share this pleasure and satisfaction with others of
similar tastes and disposition.

The great collections of the world and our museums have
been started and developed as a result of this instinct to
preserve and to collect.

The joy in the process of acquiring, exchanging,
purchasing, completing a collection and then displaying it
for optimal benefit of those interested in the field and of
maintaining the collection is often more important the
acquisition activities themselves.

What happens then when one has had this fulfillment and
one is in the process of slowing down and inevitably facing
the prospect of mortality?

What I have observed with regard to human institutions,
including the result of efforts to build a collection and to
institutionalize this collection, is that permanence and
continuity become major considerations and issues.

Even if one relies on biological heirs, there is no guarantee
that the heirs will take the same interest in and the same
passion for collection and cherishing the collection.
Families disperse, heirs are sometimes uncaring and
unappreciative of the past and what their parents and
grandparents had to go through to build up these
collections. They fall prey to poverty and dispose of these
collections. The institutions which survive are not
biological families and family wealth but churches and
schools and governments which caring for the national
treasures keep these items preserved and on display for
late generations through museums and galleries.

The great collections of the world, at least up until now,
were built up by caring and concerned individuals with a
passion for the past and for collecting and maintaining.
Sooner or later, a larger institution has to take over to
assure continuity and support. This is where museums
have a function. Whether aided by the government itself
or set up in cooperation with universities and churches,
they are perduring institutions of society.

The Guevara family has reached such a stage of
development and maturation when it must think of the
future realistically and ensure that the collection so
painstakingly gathered together by Domingo and Carmen
Guevara will be taken care of for posterity, for the benefit
of their fellow Filipinos, for every generation must retrieve
its past, come to terms with it, eye it critically but
lovingly, and make it part of its being and identity. The
collection has suffered the vicissitudes of social
changes—from a self-sufficient museum by itself to the
Central Bank Museum, then the Nayong Pilipino, and
hopefully now, to its ultimate resting place, the Museo
here in Cavite.

Having gone through a similar experience with our own
family’s modest collection, so painstakingly collected by
my grandparents and parents, especially by my mother, I
built up some of the collection not much in furniture but in
crystal and silver and now in the last phase of my life
realize that I must let go and let go graciously, to the
point of making it a fine art. I am sure that other
collectors have had similar experiences as the Guevaras
and I have had.

The DM Guevara Collection has finally found a home, an
institution that we think will last. Not only in the academic
community of Cavite but all of Philippine society should
justly appreciate this fine gesture on the part of the family
represented here especially through the daughters Carmen
Guevara-Monfort and Celia Guevara-Lazaro and their
brothers Petronilo, Reynaldo, Domingo Jr., Robert, Benjamin
and Ricardo, who have left this precious legacy of their
mother and father to the Filipino people through the Museo
De La Salle. I do not consider this collection a De La Salle
Museum property but a legacy to the Filipino people by the
DM Guevara family, which De La Salle has accepted to
safeguard, protect, preserve and maintain on behalf of the
donors.

To them we express our gratitude and appreciation, their
vision, and the generosity that has characterized the
family as it manifests the fine art of letting go…