YOUR EXCEL LENCY

US Ambassador MaryKay Carlson gives a tour of her residence, personal life and why she loves her assignment in the Philippines

- Chit L Lijauco

The whereabouts of the United States ambassador's residence in the Philippines is not a classified document. Unbeknownst to many, however, is an art treasure at the bottom of the swimming pool on the west side of the property, around which one-third of the house wraps itself. This rare artwork in tile, created by the National Artist Vicente Manansala (1910-1981) when the pool was constructed in 1965, is a cubist depiction of sea creatures and plants in shades of blue, a beautiful specimen of the signature style of the artist hailed as the Pablo Picasso of the Philippines. For decades, it lay in the bottom of the pool, admired privately but uncelebrated publicly. It could have ended up as "lost art" if not for a restoration job commissioned by the US State Department's Office of Cultural Heritage in 2019. Bob Hannum, the restorer invited by the Cultural Heritage Office, wrote that this was "one of the most difficult, and exciting, projects I've worked on". He finished what he was asked to do in May 2022, just in time for the arrival of the new ambassador in July.

Mary Kay Loss Carlson of Little Rock, Arkansas, has clocked 30-plus years in the foreign service and was excited to serve as an ambassador for the first time. She immediately took interest in the Manansala piece as well as the history of the 60-year-old official residence.

"The State Department had that swimming pool completely refurbished; we even had an art historian come out," says Ambassador Carlson. "It's possible that before my time, the pool didn't quite look that way because, over decades of use, the tiles would have chipped and cracked and been repaired [but not restored]." So proud is she of the master's work that for this pictorial, she wondered how it could be best photographed, even toying with the idea of using a drone.