I. About the Pinto Art Museum

In, 1974, I built my house up in the hills of Antipolo. At the time I was starting my career as a practising neurologist and teacher, and I needed to have my own space, a sense of a center where I could recharge and shut out the chaos of the world. I called it El Refugio, and inside the house was a wall of ancient bricks that I'd had brought from my hometown, fixed in place with lime admixed with egg whites- a centuries-old construction technique no longer practiced. My sole activity at El Refugio was cultivating a garden, similar to what I had tended as a child in faraway Ilocos, with jasmine and ylang-ylang, and pristine-white rosal that scented the tropical air. Every now and then Invited soulmates from the city to share with me the crisp sunlight and the soft moonlight, guitar music and silence. But most of the time. It was just me and the earth and the plants that flourished in my care.

In 1986, the sunflowers that grew wild in Antipolo bloomed profusely, and as it happened, it was also a time of change, when a popular revolt ended a dictatorship.

I decided to open El Refugio to kindred souls that were passionate to help re- create the country, rekindle our love of art and culture, and care for the environment. Artists soon trooped to Antipolo and made El Refugio their home, too; and along with my students, the artists became my children. I helped them with their careers, and in return their prodigious creativity gave me profound joy. For three decades, I acquired their seminal works, which in large part documented our joys and sorrows, our failures and aspirations. These works, which I had kept in my bedroom, mirrored our times as a country and our dreams as a people. Shortly, I knew it was time to share this precious trove with the public, and the Pintô Art Museum was born. Antonio Leaño, an artist who had stayed longest in El Refugio, was ordained project "architect". He liked to create buildings as art installations, and El Refugio had the space for that audacious vision. But more important, we shared the same passion for gardening- not the well-manicured sort but the wild kind that allowed plants to grow in dizzying profusion. We nurtured grasses, plants that nestled in crevices, mosses that softened adobe walls and draped trees that were home to birds which chirped to greet the morning sun. We planted with the season in mind. We thrived in our silences even as we celebrated the Museum's significant milestones.

As the garden took shape and the trees shot up skyward, the collection of artworks multiplied. The mantra for the Law of Attraction is an eternal truth: "If you build it, he will come." In El Refugio's case, visitors and kindred spirits have not stopped coming since it opened its doors as the Pintô Art Museum. The refuge has been shared, and so has my immense pleasure in what is turning out to be a patch of earth fit for the gods. | JOVEN R. CUANANG

II. Transportation

There will be no transportation provided

III. Activities

Exhibition opening festivities spills over until the evening