#  Balikbayan | Homecoming 

 



       ![Box stamped with "balikbayan" sits on grass with Filipino items spilling out.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/peabody/files/balikbayan_hero_brighter.jpg?itok=_x-BXqws) 

 

 



 

 



 

##  Balikbayan | Homecoming 

## Filipino Perspectives on the Philippine Collections

Inspired by the ideas of home and away associated with the iconic and transnational balikbayan box, Filipino and Filipino-American contributors share their reflections on Peabody Museum collections.



 

> ####  *Balik*: to return. *Bayan*: homeland. Together: *balikbayan*.

 This simple Tagalog compound term has a complex political history linked to former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos' reaction to the Filipino-American "brain drain" of the 1960s. Today it is most commonly fixed in the contemporary imagination with a cardboard box. The balikbayan box is an important symbol of connection, culture, and identity for Filipino communities in the United States and the Philippines. The boxes are filled with things for family back home, whether household goods such as toiletries, candy, clothes and toys, or special gifts and mementos of family activities and milestones.

 More than just a care package, balikbayan boxes are a vital and beloved diasporic tradition. They link those at home with those away. The boxes traverse vast geographic distances and bridge widening familial and cultural gaps. Paradoxically, they also reinforce those very distances. Balikbayan doesn't exist without the distance, without both the home and the away.

 For many people, museum collections often evoke these same paradoxical emotions. Cultural heritage items can invigorate relationships and traditions, yet they also exist in museums through the process of being removed. They come from home, they manifest home, they are home. Yet they are away.

 This exhibition is inspired by these core values underpinning this cultural icon: assembling, sharing, sending, remembering. Thirteen Filipino and Filipino-American thinkers, artists, culture bearers, activists, scholars, and traditional leaders were invited to select an item in the care of the Peabody Museum and share their thoughts and reflections.

 This homecoming is not one of physical return but follows in the tradition of the flow of cultural ideas between locales and peoples. What results is a diverse exploration of items compiled and stored away over one hundred years ago, unsettling histories, celebrating creative brilliance, and complicating our ideas about transnational identity.

 Home. Away.



 

##  When is a spoon more than just a spoon? 

 Cultural heritage items are often employed in museum settings to reveal something about the past, demonstrating traditional skills and knowledge from a certain group of people in a specific place and time. Most of the Philippines collections at the Peabody Museum were assembled around 1905 at the request of then-Museum Director Frederic W. Putnam who sought “a representation of the ethnology…of the Philippines.” After just ten short years, the museum bolstered its Philippines collections from under fifty items to more than two thousand, thanks to collectors like H. Otley Beyer, William C. Forbes, and Edward Bowditch, Jr. Together, the collections are meant to represent the peoples that crafted them. In most cases, the names of the makers were never recorded, or have been lost. In reality, we know more about the collectors than anyone else.

 So whose stories can they tell?

 Things, as well as images, have the remarkable capacity to transport us to a different time and place, often in very personal ways. Little details can spark old memories and take us down unexpected paths that reveal something new about ourselves, whether it be a fond recollection of the traditions that center us, or the painful return to the difficult histories that forged us. Sometimes, seeing things can reignite old knowledge no longer used amidst modernity’s offerings. Perhaps the gaze in that girl’s face reminds of us someone. Or the texture of that skein of fiber has us questioning our own weaving technique.

 The following essays take us on both historically illuminating and personally intimate voyages inspired by the collections. While initially collected for the museum with one representational intention, these contributors demonstrate the profound ways they take on very individual significance.



 

  [### Grace Talusan

 ](/gracetalusan) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Grace Talusan.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/grace_talusan_image_card_object.jpg?itok=RXuYzn7W) 

 

 

 

  [### Katte Geneta

 ](/kattegeneta) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Katte Geneta.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/geneta_image_card_object.jpg?itok=pj7kpKtP) 

 

 

 

  [### Cristina Juan

 ](/cristinajuan) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Cristina Juan.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/cristina_juan_image_card_object.jpg?itok=G_j0kzD-) 

 

 

 

  [### Lani Asunción

 ](/laniasuncion) 

   ![Peabody Museum photograph chosen by Lani Asuncion.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/lani_asuncion_image_card_object.jpg?itok=djJg9_6_) 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

##  Legacies of the Colonial Image 

 At the turn of the twentieth century, then-United States president William McKinley promoted an approach to continue American presence in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War that he euphemistically called “benevolent assimilation.” During this period, photography became an important tool for legitimizing this colonization for a skeptical American public. Depictions of the Philippines grew in popularity through travel magazines, books, and postcards that made visible certain ideas about Filipino identities while suppressing others. These imagined narratives of civilization and savagery were created through a distinctly colonial gaze.

 Today, tens of thousands of these photographic images and postcard reproductions exist scattered across countless libraries, museums, and archives in the United States, yet are becoming increasingly available as institutions digitize their collections.

 The four contributors in this section grapple with the legacies of these photographs, and for some, the ways the photos can inform their individual and collective Filipino-American identities. What potential narratives might be forged with their renewed visibility? Will their recirculation revive the colonial logics under which they were taken? Or can they be recycled, recalibrated, and reclaimed? What details might be examined to humanize the photographic subjects and flesh out the moments occurring before and after the click of the colonial camera?



 

  [### Ricardo Punzalan

 ](/rickypunzalan) 

   ![Detail of Peabody Museum photograph chosen by Ricardo Punzalan.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/ricky_punzalan_image_card_object_2.jpg?itok=KrfgDPrf) 

 

 

 

  [### Jason Reblando

 ](/jasonreblando) 

   ![Detail of Peabody Museum photograph chosen by Jason Reblando.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/reblando_image_card_object_2.jpg?itok=W9wnzYyH) 

 

 

 

  [### Stephanie Syjuco

 ](/stephaniesyjuco) 

   ![Peabody Museum image chosen by Stephanie Syjuco.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/syjuco_image_card_object_2.jpg?itok=dTx1nAUc) 

 

 

 

  [### Marie Wasnock

 ](/mariewasnock) 

   ![Detail of Peabody Museum photograph chosen by Marie Wasnock.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/wasnock_image_card_object_2.jpg?itok=m7Slr2q1) 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

##  It’s in the Details 

 Historically, ethnographic museum collections served as sources for research—static foreign ambassadors for comparative cultural understanding. They were acquired to be exemplary specimens demonstrating what a weapon or tool *typically* looks like or how they were *typically* used. Some of the collections from the Philippines currently in the care of the Peabody Museum came from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair with this intent. At this event, thousands of Filipino “artifacts” (and peoples) were transported and displayed to promote American social and political interventions in the Philippines following the Spanish-American (1898) and Philippine-American (1899–1902) wars. Sadly, “typical” Filipino cultural heritage and people were presented to support American beliefs of superiority, effectively underscoring the fabricated need for continued colonial presence. Weapons, housewares, tools, and adornment were arranged according to ill-defined ethnic groups. Miniatures of looms, houses, and canoes were also commissioned by Filipino artists specifically for the fair.

 Collectively, however, this Americanized presentation of heritage resulted in a static, simplified, and inaccurate representation of Filipino lives and histories, ignoring the makers and the myriad decisions and actions that brought their creations to life. It’s all in the details. Specific design choices or instrumentations—what fabrics are chosen, which symbols denote which social status, which note to tune to—reflect social hierarchies, regional differences, individual preferences, global connections, economic pressures, envronmental realities, and modern desires. Then, and now.

 In this final section, contributors consider five pieces collected in the early 1900s, diving into the details of construction, symbolism, and materials, revealing some of the remarkable choices made historically as well as how these creative expressions continue to be relevant, while evolving, today. What happens when a man plays a woman’s gong? Why does a blanket has four instead of three panels? Can an inabal skirt made from foreign materials still be an inabal?



 

  [### Marlon Martin

 ](/marlonmartin) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Marlon Martin.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/marlon_martin_image_card_object.jpg?itok=WYJKrRZF) 

 

 

 

  [### Armand Cating

 ](/armandcating) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Armand Cating.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/armand_cating_image_card_object.jpg?itok=JA8It0kb) 

 

 

 

  [### Datu Migketay V. Saway

 ](/datusaway) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Datu Migketay V Saway.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/datu_migketay_v_saway_image_card_object.jpg?itok=dH0Tic0B) 

 

 

 

  [### Charisse Aquino Tugade

 ](/charissetugade) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Charisse Aquino Tugade.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/charisse_aquino_tugade_image_card_object.jpg?itok=5i3xRKwx) 

 

 

 

  [### Mary Talusan Lacanlale

 ](/marytlacanlale) 

   ![Peabody Museum item chosen by Mary Talusan Lacanlale.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4921/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/peabody/files/mary_talusan_lacanlale_image_card_object.jpg?itok=yUUIsWDC) 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

##  Acknowledgements 

 This exhibition was curated by Ingrid Ahlgren, but is the product of many collaborative conversations and relationships over the course of two years, not just from the contributors themselves, but amongst colleagues and friends across Harvard University and beyond. Many thanks in particular to Lady Aileen Orsal for the title inspiration. And to Kathy Dougherty, Judy Jungels, Diana Loren, Cindy Mackey, Angela Ortiz, Faith Sutter, and Diana Zlatanovski for innumerable contributions.

 It stems from the thought-provoking work of Katte Geneta while a student in Museum Studies at the Harvard Extension School, and I am grateful for her inspiration in sparking this journey together. Read more about our work together in the 2022 article [Flattening Identity: Colonial Accumulation and Hidden Archives at Harvard's Philippine Collection](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/868495/pdf).

 Finally, and most importantly, this exhibition really is about the contributor stories, honoring the voices of those knowledge holders, academics, artists, and traditional leaders. I am incredible grateful for what I have learned through this process. Thank you for sharing your stories.

 Salamat!

 *Image at top of page: "To/From Boston with Love." Photo by Ingrid Ahlgren 2024.*