MANILA, Philippines - You would think Doris Magsaysay-Ho?s day job as president and CEO for Magsaysay Maritime Corp. was enough to keep her busy and committed to profit for the company?s shareholders, but no.

As chair of Asia Society (Manila chapter), board member and trustee of several culture and charity institutions, she is not only a tireless supporter of the arts and culture, but also a brilliant fundraiser who believes in the importance of stewardship: that those of means must bear responsibility for those without.

Putting her privileged status and name to a noble cause once more, Ho has enjoined her esteemed arts patron friends Evelyn Lim-Forbes, Washington SyCip and Jaime Laya, with the Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation, to organize ?Fernando C. Amorsolo: His Art, Our Heart,? a celebration of Filipino heritage through the masterful works of Fernando Amorsolo, the country?s first National Artist.

Vibrant artistry

A ?culture coup,? as Ho calls it, the exhibits will showcase Amorsolo?s vibrant artistry in seven different venues from September 2008 to April 2009.

It will open at Metropolitan Museum of Manila and be on view in the National Museum, GSIS Museum, Ayala Museum, Lopez Museum, Jorge Vargas Museum and the Yuchengco Museum.

Each venue will showcase a different facet of Amorsolo as a genre painter of Philippine sunlight and scenery, a portraitist, an illustrator of Filipino values, a historian and a teacher.

The theme ?His Art, Our Heart? aims to connect the exhibit to a wider audience and foster a greater appreciation for art, culture and national pride, especially among a new generation who will see the prolific output of a man whose personalized interpretations of national identity have become icons of popular 20th-century culture.

Many of the paintings come from private collections and will be on public view for the first time.

Museum themes

?Each museum will have a theme. An essay, a thesis, relevant lectures and fora will supplement each exhibit. The works will also be catalogued and documented in a book, but more importantly, all the major Manila universities are making it part of their humanities program,? says Ho.

Metropolitan Museum?s ?Philippine Staple: The Land, the Harvest and the Maestro? will celebrate the cycle of rice as seen through the eyes of the acknowledged master of atmospheric sunlight. The exhibit will highlight the master?s personal language in the realist tradition of composed landscapes and naturalness.

Ayala Museum will present ?Amorsolo?s Maidens Concealed & Revealed.? The exhibit will focus on women as a way of understanding Amorsolo?s celebration of beauty and feminine sensuality. It will draw attention to his country maidens from the American period in our history and his studies of nudes from the postwar years.

Through Amorsolo?s women, this exhibit will also explore notions of costume as identity, pride as embodied by the Filipino woman, and hope as projected in harvest and sun-filled scenes of abundance.

The Lopez Museum?s ?Tell Tale: The Artist as Story Teller, Amorsolo as Co-Author? will showcase Amorsolo?s emotionally charged, whimsical, humorous and surreal illustrations central to the crafting of fiction set against the backdrop of Spanish-American-Filipino rule.

The National Museum?s ?Master Copy? exhibit presents a multifaceted collection of drawings, portraits and memorabilia that puts the spotlight on Amorsolo?s artistic practice. His artworks and personal effects are put together to reveal his life as a reflection of a time defined by major historical and social changes.

The GSIS Museum of Art?s ?Rituals and Amorsolo? will bring to fore major works that are testaments to our traditions and values.

The UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum?s ?Amorsolo, His Contemporaries and Pictures of War: Capturing Anxieties? features the works of Amorsolo and his contemporaries spanning World War II (1941-1945) until the immediate postwar years (1946-1947).

These include family portraits commissioned by Jorge B. Vargas, official portraits, genre paintings that present the idealized bucolic countryside acceding to the Japanese colonial policy, and, despite strict censorship, paintings that portray the destruction and the displacement of a nation emerging from the devastation of war.

The Yuchengco Museum?s ?Mukhang Tsinoy: Portraits by Fernando Amorsolo? presents portraits commissioned by Filipino-Chinese families, some of which will be shown to the public for the first time.

Beneficiaries

?Amorsolo?s body of work was really, to borrow the author Azar Nafisi?s words, ?the cave of our remembrance,? our values. And that, effectively, in just five words, says what this exhibit is all about,? Ho says.

The ultimate beneficiaries of the generosity of major corporate sponsors will be CRIBS (Create Responsive Infants by Sharing), as well as the seven participating museums and the Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation.

?We hope to make this project a catalyst that will engage stakeholders in a campaign to strengthen pride in a nation and its people,? says Ho.

?In a sense, all these efforts at heritage conservation, keeping your buildings, keeping your monuments, making a park, putting sidewalks, having these paintings and art known to people, it?s really giving inner strength to us as a people. These are little steps to finally get us on the road toward developing a culture of appreciation.?