Pall over the mall 2026

(Part 1)

Yesterday, the 4^th of July 2026, is the 250^th anniversary of the foundation of the United States of America. It should have been an enormous celebration. The National Mall in Washington, DC, the vast rectangular hectarage between the obelisk of the Washington Monument and the US Congress, would been the locus of paroxysms of triumphal performance of the nation.

Right now, there is only a smattering of the would-be great crowds, a scattershot of die-hard MAGA devotees in unison denying the emptiness of the Mall.

The entertainers include the girlfriend of Kash Patel, head of the present administration’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, a man so incompetent and unworthy, that no words suffice to describe him. About the quality of the art on the Mall, no deprecating word suffices.

The would-be spectacle did not materialize. No self-respecting artist would be comfortable participating in President Donald Trump’s MAGA fest. No decent scenographer would have been interested in constructing narcissistic edifices. And no visitor other than cult members would have bothered.

The US is spending its milestone with signs galore of this nation’s inability to stop the emergence of an aging criminal to the presidency.

Even the optimistic few — libertarians who think all this will pass — acknowledge the destruction of the nation’s symbols of cultural power.

That destruction is widely understood as symbolic of the measurable loss of economic and political power globally.

WORDS GALORE
The Philippines anointed itself the first republic in Asia in 1898, a full half century before any other modern nation in this continent. The Smithsonian Institution, which is among the multiple supervisory agencies taking care of the Mall, hosted the Philippines in 1998 for a full program of traditional performances for two weeks ending on the 4^th of July.

Organized by the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Smithsonian’s Folklife Center, the large-scale event was to celebrate the century mark of the declaration of independence, in 1998. Ninety traditional performance and material artmakers were selected to travel to the US for a program that I co-curated with the Smithsonian’s Folklife Center Director Rich Kennedy.

Through the year and a half prior to June-July 1998, the curatorial team made sure that the featured artists were, firstly, known to all art specialists as the virtuosos of a form; and secondly, that this recognition was shared by their communities.

The delegation that materialized from the selection included: the literally divine instrumentalist on the Maguindanao kutyapi (two-stringed lute); a group composed of the exemplars of kulintang music, led by Aga Mayo Butocan and featuring the famous Kalanduyan brothers and a kulintang maker from Simuay, Cotabato; a group of Kalinga musicians led by Beny Sokkong, playing flat gongs and bamboo instruments, not the least the nose flute; the elderly subli dancers of Sinala, Batangas; church singers from Bacong, Negros Oriental; musikong bumbong of Malabon; ikat dyers Salinta Monon, a Bagobo woman, and Lang Dulay, a Tboli woman, accompanied by Tboli dancer Maria Oanan; arnis practitioners from Cebu; a maker of woven, plank-built boats from Panay; a goldsmith from Paracale, Camarines Norte; Bulacan chef Mila Enriquez; Pampango santo carver Ardie de Dios, and a full ensemble of Talaandig dancers from Lantapan, Bukidnon, led by Datu Victorino Saway.

During and immediately after the two-week set of performances, all words uttered were as an extended collective gushing.

I was pleased that in a span of three weeks overseas, a group of 100 Filipinos who did not know each other, neither fought nor bickered.

It seems that at the level mastery possessed by each, there was no need to prove anything. No urge to brawl. A high point, to my mind, of the Filipino experience.

EXORCISMS
The Philippine Festival was curated by my team to exorcise the ghosts of the 1911 St. Louis Exposition where example specimens of Philippine culture groups were quite literally displayed as the creatures possessed by the young American empire-in-progress.

The long curatorial process involved the specific skills of each specialist: singer, academic, and scholar par excellence Elena Rivera Mirano (eventually Dean of UP Kolegio ng Arte at Literatura); research led by the redoubtable Marialita Yraola who recruited Patricia Brilliantes Silvestre (now Dean of the UP College of Music), Michi Martinez (now a deeply admired orchestra conductor), and architect (now architect-anthropologist) Leonido Gines, Jr.; architect Paulo Alcazaren who designed the scenography under curatorial guidance; and architect Jose Luis Mata of the Intramuros Administration.

Ramon Obusan (who would be National Arist), Deni Tan, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines administrative and presenter contingent of Eva Marie Salvador, Nikko Zapata, Carmencita Jasareno, Sonny Cristobal, and Eric Cruz mother henned the many dozens who had never traveled before.

The curatorial plan of exorcism: to present masters, not exhibits. To formulate the entire plan around the will to teach the world instead of being curious specimens. And to exhibit the dignity of people who are incredibly good at what they are doing.

We managed this exorcism.

But we did not know there was another ghost. One which is impervious to exorcism by curatorial strategy.

(To be continued.)

Marian Pastor Roces is an independent curator and critic of institutions. Her body of work addresses the intersection of culture and politics.