ART'S HEROES AND ZEROES

2024's defining moments in art and history.

- Lisa Guerrero Nakpil

In a year confounded by global terrors from flash floods in Naga's Nueva Caceres and namesake towns in Spain's Valencia to international coups and electoral upsets – Filipino art and history still managed to supply 2024's best feel-good moments. It combined the country's heroes with the collecting public's appetite for zeroes in the multimillions, guaranteeing blockbuster history.

It clothed dust-covered memory with the necessary glamour in an age obsessed with billionaires traveling the world in private jets and even landing a second time in the White House. It was all about having the fame of a Kim Kardashian and the fortune of someone on the Forbes Top Ten Richest List.

But there were also heartwarming touches of the everyday – with the rental fees paid for by the hundreds of Jollibee Chicken Joys sold at the Luneta footing the bill for Jose Rizal's very own "Mona Lisa," titled "Josephine Sleeping."

The story of the year has to go to the National Museum's landmark move "to exercise its right of first refusal and match the winning bid" for what's now the most famous sculpture in the Philippines, if not the most expensive Rizaliana in the whole world, with a price-tag of P31.2 million set at the Leon Gallery Kingly Treasures Action last Nov. 30.

"I still get goosebumps when I see it," declared National Museum chair Andoni Aboitiz, referring to the precious plaster of Paris work created by none other than the country's national hero. "I'm not worried about what people are going to say about our buying it. I'm more worried about what they would have said if we didn't. We now have the law behind us and we have the money. There's no excuse not to acquire this for the Filipino people," he said with obvious delight.