Laon/Laan: The Exhibition on Rice is currently on display at the Museum of the Filipino People. Dedicated to the National Hero, Jose Rizal, the exhibition begins with the note that the former Jose Mercado changed his name to "rice," Rizal. Coming from a family of rice farmers, Rizal would also have known that the first word of his pen-name, Laong Laan, refers to both ancientness and a variety of rice.

The exhibition marks an important first: artifacts, images, and data from the widest range of disciplines are brought together in order to give the fullest possible portrait of rice and the Filipino. The materials are gathered from archaeology, anthropology, sociology, history, bio-technology, literature studies, musicology, botany, zoology, art history, and food studies.

The exhibition features the extensive National Museum ethnography collection, as well as generous loans of key artifacts from collectors Ramon Villegas, Richard and Sandra Lopez, Maria Closa and Rudolf Krachtowill, Terry Baylosis, Antonio Martino, Victorino Manalo, Lourdes Panlilio, Jose Ma. Ricardo Panlilio, Basilidez Benjamin Bautista, and Rachy Cuna.

Among the artifacts expected to contribute to making this exhibition an extraordinary experience are: fossil rice from an archaeological site in Mindoro; antique plows made of kamagong and other farm implements hewn out of Philippine hardwoods; exquisite baskets for presenting and storing rice from communities from North to South of the Philippines; unusual stone mortars; dibbles that are also musical instruments; and an enormous boat-like object of hardwood, that was used by Ilokano farmers for bringing rice seedlings to the flooded fields for planting, a sampling of the various rice varieties in the country.

Laon/Laan also presents to the public a riveting set of documents from the Bautista family of Malolos, Bulacan, consisting of close to 200 years of family records.

Documented by hand are: through the 19th century, names of individuals kasama (share-croppers) with their share of harvest minus the cost of seedlings and loans; maps of lands owned, hand-drawn on silk; purchase documents of land; and most important, extant examples of the pacto de retroventa, the instrument by which small landholdings passed into the hands of wealthy farmer-entrepreneur landowners as payment for debts. Included is a letter, handwritten in 19th century Tagalog, explaining the sequence of domestic catastrophes that give the letter-writers no option but to borrow money from the wealthy. These last two sets of items contribute enormously to the present-day understanding of the creation of haciendas, thus, wealth, in the Philippines, and conversely, the creation of a peasant class.

Supplementing the artifacts is a range of visual images, major among these a selection of photographs from the personal archive of noted photojournalist Edgardo Santiago. These photographs, spanning the last four decades, collectively give a panoramic view of both the griefs and joys associated with rice production. Santiago's keen eye for the pathos of the lives of ordinary Filipinos - lining up, for instance, for the bag of rice from politicians - stands in marked contrast with the tendency of Filipino painters to portray rice farmers in their fields in the happiest of colors and moods. International photographers Neal Oshima and Yamamoto Munesuke have also contributed significant images.

Laon/laan exhibits a representative sample of Philippine pastorale, with paintings and sculpture selected from the National Museum art collection including rare works by Juan Luna on the subject of rice planting, together with paintings and sculptures loaned by artist Manuel Baldemor, Rudolf Lietz and the Gallery of Prints have also very generously loaned for the one-year exhibition 19th century prints, all featuring phases of rice planting, harvesting and stacking.

Laon/Laan was curated by Marian Pastor Roces, with curatorial inputs form National Museum Director Corazon Alvina, and th division heads and senior researchers of the National Museum: Wilfredo Ronquillo, archeology; Artemio Barbosa, anthropology; Roberto de Ocampo, geology; Rodolfo Caberoy, zoology; Romualdo del Rosario and the late Lolita Bulalacao, botany. Key to rounding-up the narration of rice in Philippine life were interviews with Martin Tinio Jr., Benjamin Basilidez Bautista, and Jose Ma. Ricardo Panlilio and essays by Fernando Zialcita, National Artist for literature F Sionil Jose, and John Schumacher, SJ.

Laon/laan, which will be on view for one year in time also to mask the International Year of Rice in 2004, has been made possible by the generous assistance of John Silva, the Embassy of the United States of American, the Philippine National Museum Foundation, the Museum Foundation of the Philippines, and the support of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Ateneo University Press,Philrice, the International Rice Research Institute.

For more information about the exhibition, call the National Museum Education Division at 527-0278; the director's office at 527-1215, or the Museum of the Filipino People at 524-3005. The Museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is located in the Teodoro Valencia Circle, Rizal Park, Manila.