Art conservator Margarita Villanueva shares how caring for artworks safeguards Philippine history and identity
Who writes history?
Winston Churchill believes victors are history’s authors. Napoleon Bonaparte argues that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.” Despite all this talk of destruction and strife, the writing—and rewriting—of history is occasionally done with a gentle brushstroke and a light pull of tweezers.
These rewriters of history come in the form of technicians wearing white lab coats who surround paintings, books, and maps in brightly lit, temperature-controlled warehouses. They hunch over centuries-old canvases by artists like Félix Resurrección Hidalgo and brush away dirt and fibers from the surface.
It’s here at the Lopez Museum and Library where a team of conservators preserve artworks and objects—from a book in 1524 detailing Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines to paintings by old masters. At the helm of this operation is the Lopez Museum’s manager of conservation, Margarita “Marga” Villanueva.
“We as conservators, in many ways, are part of what stories are told,” Villanueva says. “What layers do we expose, maintain, or remove? For artworks that have been vandalized, do you want to repair them? Or, is this a memory of an important political act or moment in history? Should this now be part of the work?”
View this post on Instagram
The responsibility of deciding what to keep as part of it and what to let go weighs over Villanueva and her team of 10 people. However, they implement painstakingly rigorous procedures to assess objects before restoring them.
“My day-to-day is really looking and overseeing our three major programs, which are practical conservation, preventive conservation, and research,” details Villanueva. The process of conservation, from physical restoration to research, requires immense concentration. However, each day in the lab presents special challenges and opportunities for the team.
Marga Villanueva’s path to conservation
Conservation in the Philippines is what you would call an extremely niche industry. As of writing, there are no conservation degrees at undergraduate and graduate levels in the country. It was only through serendipity and loss that Villanueva found her calling.
“I grew up in a family that had a lot of art and antiques. We’d go to museums and I loved it,” she reminisces. “In school, I remember, I loved history, but then I had a terrible memory. I loved art, but I wasn’t particularly artistic. I was more like a copyist.”
In addition to the arts, Villanueva learned that her natural gifts lay in the sciences. So, she followed her curiosity in all these subjects, much to the confusion of her school’s guidance counselor. To potential college admissions officers, her subject choices seemed disparate. However, a personal tragedy created the opportunity for Villanueva to pursue all her interests.
“One typhoon season, my grandmother’s artworks got damaged by a leak. She asked my mom to help her find a restorer,” Villanueva recounts. “Along the way, I learned about the field. I thought, ‘This is for me.’”
After high school, Villanueva moved to Canada to attend the University of British Columbia, where she earned degrees in materials chemistry and art history. In Canada, she cut her teeth at restoration studios. Much of her work there involved treating 19th-century European paintings, often of marine scenes with naval battles.
Next, Villanueva relocated to Italy to work at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which focuses on contemporary art and manages the American Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. She started as an intern, where she impressed the team, and eventually started working full-time.
In 2012, she started at the Lopez Museum in the Philippines, where she immersed herself in art conservation within a tropical context. In 2015, she pursued a master’s degree in professional conservation at Cardiff University before returning to the Philippines.
“It was so amazing to come home and restore things of my heritage,” she says. “The Lopez collection, of course, prides itself on being a Filipiniana museum.”
The art of preservation and restoration
At the Lopez Museum, artworks often arrive in crates and cardboard boxes. Instead of jumping in with solvents and brushes, Villanueva and her team step back to assess the object. “Part of the function of the Conservation Department is to understand what the requirements are per material. For example, newsprints tend to degrade much quicker.”
Villanueva and the conservators at the Lopez Museum also look at other factors like cleanliness, stains, and biological presence, such as termites and other insects. Through this assessment, the team develops a strategy for treatment. The process of treating a painting or a book can take as long as a year, depending on the amount of restoration needed.
“If you work with artworks and books, you need to be patient,” advises senior conservation technician Rodrigo Enano. Together with fellow technician Ricardo Calizon, Enano documents each artwork before treatment to maintain a reference. For books, the technicians remove mold from the pages and repair each page using thin strips of washi paper.
Villanueva and her team also take great care when sending works by Filipino artists around the world. In 2018, the team restored work by Pacita Abad for the late artist’s retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila. Villanueva then couriered the tapestry, “My Fear of Night Diving” to the Art Gallery of Ontario to ensure its safety while on loan. “Part of conservation’s role is to ensure the safety of the artwork from the moment it leaves the facility to when it comes back.”
Conservation also extends beyond maintaining an artwork’s physical integrity. For Villanueva, it’s essential to place an artwork within the broader context of history and the community. “Objects are not static. They’re quite dynamic and often change over time.”
Villanueva and her team were tasked to restore a painting by National Artist Fernando Amorsolo from a church. The painting showed typical signs of degradation, like dirt, cracks, and stains. The bottom edge was particularly worn and faded.
“As I observed the parish and how the object functioned in the church, I realized that parishioners were praying to the painting,” she reflects. “They were rubbing the bottom edge of the frame. If you restore it perfectly, repair the entire bottom edge, and keep people away, you lose the memory and perhaps the potency of the spiritual connection.”
Although conservators treat existing artworks, they have the power to shape how that work is received and remembered. This power lies in choosing what is salvaged or forgotten.
And, conservators are well aware of the power they hold. Villanueva emphasizes that restoration efforts should use reversible materials since objects will be treated over and over again in the future. “We want to make sure that everything we do doesn’t harm the original object and that future conservators can easily revisit our treatment process.”
The unique challenges of conserving in the tropics
When Villanueva moved back to the Philippines, she found herself in a tough yet promising position. Restoring and preserving artworks in a tropical climate comes with a host of special challenges. “It’s so hot and humid that objects degrade so much quicker than in temperate climate zones. The tropics also invite new issues, whether they’re mold, biological risks, or damage.”
Southeast Asia’s climate affects not only individual works of art but also the art community and market as a whole. “Most museums in the Philippines don’t have tight climate controls. Institutions that do have those controls get very nervous lending because of the conservation risk.” This means that the art communities all over the Philippines only see a fraction of art from around the world.
Villanueva took it upon herself to curb this issue. She’s in the process of developing a special framing technology that seals objects in ideal climate conditions. Through these micro-climate frames, museums and galleries without climate-controlled facilities could display objects while lowering the risk of degradation. For example, the Lopez Museum carried out one of the largest loans of Philippine masters—including Luna, Hidalgo, Amorsolo, and Arellano—to the University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo.
“For our micro-climate frames and even our fumigation chamber, there is no local store,” she explains. “You have to be so creative, and that’s not unique to the Philippines. A lot of Southeast Asian countries are in the same situation.”
These micro-climate frames help extend the lifespan of artwork, however, it’s important to prevent degradation and decay as early as now. Villanueva was involved in designing the structure and climate-controlled capabilities of the Lopez Museum’s conservation site.
“I had never designed a storage space before, and only in the Philippines are you able to be part of such a major project.” Through this project and a course with the Getty Conservation Institute, Villanueva wrote her first paper on the indoor climate specifications for conserving work in humid climates and negotiating conditions for loans when works move from the tropics to drier, colder countries. This paper was presented at the 2023 International Council of Museums triennial conference in Valencia, Spain.
Art collectors and enthusiasts can also implement art preservation practices in their own homes. The country’s humidity increases the chances of mold, so it’s vital to maintain constant air circulation at home. After turning off the air-conditioning, it’s best to turn on the ceiling and room fans to maintain the temperature. Keeping artwork away from areas that experience strong drafts helps preserve artwork as well.
Most importantly, Villanueva stresses the importance of investing in high-quality and appropriate framing. “We often restore artwork not because of the art itself but from poor framing,” she explains. “For works on paper glued to plywood, it’s actually the glue and the wood that damage the work over time.” As the proverb goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The future of conservation
Villanueva and her team spend their days with centuries-old objects, yet the field of conservation in the Philippines is in its infancy. Not only are there no degree programs specializing in conservation right now, but there are also only a few teams that specialize in this work. But Villanueva remains optimistic.
“I feel like there’s more art being produced. There are more artists, galleries, and collectors,” she says. “It’s only a matter of time when the care of the collections will be needed.”
This long-term vision underscores the essence of conservation. Conservators take care of objects today so future generations can enjoy them. Ricardo Calizon reflects, “Mawawala kami, pero ’yung mga collection nandyan pa rin.”
“We view these works as historical records of humanity, civilization, and countries,” explains Villanueva. The Lopez Museum’s conservation initiatives help countless researchers, writers, and historians in shaping the story of the Philippines.
Who writes history? Certainly, victors of epic battles have the power to shift the narrative in their favor. However, history isn’t exclusively written in explosive displays of valor. The opportunity and privilege to shape the story lies in the small moments, like committing brush to canvas or sending a prayer through a painting.
Photos by JT Fernandez
Video by Mikey Yabut, Claire Salonga, and Jaime Morados
Makeup by Angel Reyes-Manhilot
Hair by MJ Agaton
Cover art by Angela Chen
Creative direction by Ria Prieto
Produced by Lala Singian
