Art Talk by Maria Victoria Herrera

The speaker on this event was miss Maria Victoria Herrera. She teaches Art History and museum-related courses at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. She is a freelance curator and collections management consultant, and served as director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines‘ Visual Arts Unit from 1995 to 1997.


During the talk, she discussed various topics that was very useful to us art students and also other courses related to art. She taught us the venues of interaction which consists of artists run spaces, where there's no stress on selling art compared to galleries, they are self artists, when talking about budget, they look for projects to sustain. Additionally another venue is the world known internet. You can post your artworks there and more people can see and find it. She said that Facebook was the popular choice.



Additionally, she discussed topics about mediators of art and arbiters of taste (e.g. gallery spaces, new approaches in gallery management, active role of auction houses, art competitions which is a really great way to motivate new art students, new generation of art collectors where she discussed that there are young collectors and counting up which is a great sign for the art market, art awards like Ateneo art awards which is also a great big thing in the art world)



Basically, she discussed important points to us which was really helpful. The art market today is large and we, as students who are major in painting, is very happy, but also challenged at the same time.


Moreover, I’ve discovered more contemporary artists like Roberto Chabet, Junyee, Peewee Roldan, Ling Quisumbing, Manny Montelibano, Felix Bacolor, Kiri Dalena, Mac Valdezco, Nona Garcia, MM Yu, Ryan Villamael, and Nilo Ilarde. Ronald Ventura was also featured, and I already knew his works from his exhibit at the Vargas Museum on our Art Theory 2 class. But what I didn't know is that his 40 million peso artwork was auctioned as one of the highest! I respect him very much and he's an inspiration to my career. All of these artists are mind blowing! And they are Filipinos mind you~








This installation art was by Felix Bacolor, and was said to be bought by a Singapore museum. It was said that these wind chimes were bought at Divisoria. Imagine this and the electric fan doing their work, it must've been magical!!! Too bad I wasn't able to see it. This was my most favorite feature during this art talk!




All in all the seminar was very interesting and Miss Herrera was a good talk! I've learned and realized so many things in just a small amount of time. I'm not sure if the talk was an hour, more or less. And most of the artists she featured were not really painters, they were just magnetized by art and can produce art without brushing out paints but colliding objects and doing installation artworks. All of it serves another boost of inspiration to me.


This video is not related about the talk at FEU, it's s a video showing how dedicated she is on her speeches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BATqJCAPM