If you are a fan of Philippine National Artist Benedicto Cabrera and his paintings, then BenCab Museum is the perfect destination to go to. The BenCab Museum is a cultural institution, which houses the collection of Benedicto “Bencab” Reyes Cabrera, as well as the works of many other artists. Ben Cabrera is a Filipino painter and is one of this country’s National Artists. He was born on April 10, 1942, and he was the youngest among Democrito Cabrera and Isabel Reyes’ nine children. It can be said that Ben Cabrera’s biggest artistic influence was his older brother, Salvador, who was already an established artist back when Ben was growing up. The University of the Philippines served as one of Ben Cabrera’s formative training grounds, and there he got to hone his painting skills and learn various ways of expressing art such as draftsmanship, photography, and printmaking. Ben Cabrera eventually moved to London together with his wife, Caroline Kennedy. His early early years in London were not a walk in the park, but with sheer talent and hardwork, Ben Cabrera took four decades of raw artistic passion and made his name resound from London to New York, to Macau. Ben Cabrera did not only get recognized through word-of-mouth for he had major art awards to seal off his value as a genuine artist. A couple more events in Ben Cabrera’s lifetime paved his way towards discovering new techniques and incorporating new elements and themes to his works. Out of his four decades’ worth of work, five books have been released by various authors, and these are Ben Cabrera: Etchings by Cid Reyes, BenCab’s Rock Sessions by Eric Caruncho, BENCAB by Alfred Yuson & Cid Reyes, BenCab: Nude Drawings by Alfred Yuson, and BenCab Portraits by Ambeth R. Ocampo. Currently, Ben Cabrera resides in Baguio where he continues his artistic endeavors and constantly looks out for the BenCab Museum.
The modern museum’s objective is to promote contemporary arts and to preserve, conserve, and protect the environment, most especially Cordillera’s culture and traditions. The members who have helped in founding the museum are BenCab, Annie Sarthou, Rico Hizon, Ambeth Ocampo, Patricia Coseteng, Bobby Gopiao, Jeffrey Co, Joven Cuanang and Patricia Tysmans-Clemente. The construction of the museum began in 2007. Architect Raymund Sarmiento and Enginner Noli Santos created its architectural features. One distinguishing factor of the museum is that natural lighting flows through the museum’s windows allowing you to have a different perspective on the artworks.
The BenCab museum is located in Tadianga, Tuba, Benguet and it serves as one of the biggest attractions for people taking a trip around Baguio. For just a hundred pesos, one would be treated with a profound experience in a museum that houses such rich Filipino culture and celebrates modern art developments as well. The museum featuring its modern architecture is divided into eleven galleries, which are BenCab Gallery, Cordillera Gallery, Indigo Gallery, Erotica Gallery, Sepia Gallery, Philippine Contemporary Art Galleries 1 & 2, Maestro Gallery, Print Gallery, Patio Salvador and Larawan Hall. These galleries have different creators, themes and elements.
BenCab Gallery highlights the masterpieces of the artist himself. This gallery features Mr. Cabrera’s four decades’ worth of work. A lot of Ben Cabrera’s work display a particular muse named Sabel. Other artworks of BenCab are placed in Philippine Contemporary Art Gallery 1 and 2. Works of Froilan Calayag, James Gabito, and Romeo Rosete are also placed in this section of the museum. This section celebrates modernity in technique, elements, and theme. The Cordillera Gallery highlights the rich culture, custom, and tradition of the Cordillera region by displaying their carvings and artefacts. You will see lime containers, native implements, weapons, and furniture created by artistic highland dwellers. Looking at museum’s big white wall, you will see a row of bul-ol or rice gods, which are believed to be the guardians of the crops amongst Cordilleran tribesmen in Ifugao. One should pay respect and show care in treating the rice gods or else one would suffer pestilence or illness. Another prominent gallery is the Erotica Gallery, which, as the name suggests, displays artworks with an erotic theme. Found in this gallery are raw displays of the human body and various sexual positions to symbolize fertility. Before entering the gallery, an advisory is placed for the viewers: “This gallery contains works with imagery that may be offensive to minors and to certain individuals.” Another gallery is the Print Gallery, which displays a collection of photographs, Philippine postcards, and vintage maps. This gallery is one of the galleries in the museum that highlights the more modern techniques of celebrating art, such as printed images. Next is the Maestro Gallery, which holds selected works of acclaimed masters of Philippine art such as Lee Aguinaldo, Fernando Zobel de Ayala y Montojo, Roberto Chabet, Juvenal Sanso, Victorio Edades, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Jose Joya, Arturo Luz, and Cesar Legaspi. Four galleries in the museum serve as venues for temporary shows and exhibits, and these galleries are the Indigo Gallery, Sepia Gallery, Patio Salvador, and the Larawan Hall. The Indigo Gallery is also the one that exhibits artworks that are for sale. The current exhibit is a creation of five artists using aquarelle watercolor capable of creating images through simple lines or detailed pictures. The museum also functions as a place for receptions and culture shows as evident in the open terraced Patio Salvador. Activities such as art workshops, meetings, seminars, and art film showings can be done at the Larawan Hall. If you would like to buy gifts as a remembrance from the museum, then there is the Sepia Gallery. You can choose from tribal and recycled goods, notebooks covered with BenCab’s paintings, and prints of BenCab’s paintings with his signature on it.
The artistry does not end there because if you explore further, you will discover the zen garden with a pond, an organic farm, a small strawberry field, and a mini-forest with eco-trail. On this area of the museum, you will be taken away with view of mountains, farm hills, and of South China Sea. Grown on their farm, aside from strawberries, are herbs, sweet potatoes, coffee, ornamentals, and seasonal vegetables. Truly, both nature and art lovers will be able to enjoy the art-nature fusion experience that BenCab Museum offers. In addition, the museum offers an in-house restaurant that was built and named after BenCab's famous muse in his painting. Café Sabel offers farm-fresh ingredients and home-cooked dishes by the chef. Jams, marmalades, native chocolate, and homemade atchara are also available for sale at the café. The Café also overlooks the forest, the duck pond, and the well-tendered garden. The café displays posters of all BenCab's exhibitions here in the Philippines and abroad.
With a country that’s gearing up towards more modernity and industrialization, a place like the BenCab museum is a more than pleasant means for people to get reminded of the value of preserving, conserving, and protecting nature and the wonders it can offer. More importantly, with BenCab museum, us Filipinos can now opt for a delightful way of getting in touch again with our roots and our rich Filipino culture. With BenCab museum, Filipinos can now see that whatever beautiful creations we can see in foreign lands, we can also see in our own soil. With BenCab museum, Filipinos can now recognize that our own shores hold so much talent that can rival, or even exceed, those that can be seen in foreign lands. With a country as saturated with colonial influences as ours, it is truly wonderful to have a place such as the BenCab museum to remind us that Philippines is indeed a beautiful country, and that it deserves so much more love from its own people.
One can draw interesting parallels between the works of this esteemed artist and that of Jose Rizal. The latter was also well-known in the field of arts as he knew how to paint and sculpt. Like the works showcased at BenCab Museum, Jose Rizal’s artistic crafts also include painting, maps, and sculptures. While BenCab Museum is considered as a tribute to the works of the artist himself and of the Cordillera culture, Jose Rizal’s works can be considered as homage to the people that had played a significant part in his life, his interests in life, religious figures, and of things he found worthy of creating. Both Jose Rizal and Benedicto Cabral showed that Filipino talent is no joke for it is beyond perfection. Rizal’s paintings include an oil painting of his sister Saturnina, Dapitan Church Curtains, pair of mother-of-pearl, Spanish coat of arms, allegory on a pair of porcelain bases of the New Year celebration, crayon paintings on Christ Crucified, Immaculate Conception, and a Portrait of Morayta. In the field of sculpture, he has created the following: bust of Father Jose Guerrico, Sacred Heart of Jesus, composite statuette, Mother’s revenge, Josephine Bracken, Prometheus bound, image of Virgin Mary, San Antonio de Padua, heads of 3 Beckette girls, The Centenary of the Real Society of the Friends of the Country, and many more resulting to a total count of 46 sculptures.
One of Cabral’s famous works was a mural of a woman named Sabel. She was said to be a mentally challenged woman who used to frequently wander around Ben Cabrera’s house in Sta. Cruz district of Manila in the early 1960s on Yakal Street. In his artworks, Ben Cabrera often portrayed Sabel as a woman in tattered clothes and messy hair. Still, Ben Cabrera created illustrations of Sabel that showed beauty despite the physical drawbacks. BenCab speculates that, “Sabel was married, but was abandoned by her husband, which must have caused her derangement.” According to Bencab, Sabel would beg around for food. On several occasions, Sabel would come to his house and his sisters would gave her some. BenCab knew that Sabel had children, and they’d take her home and give her a bath but Sabel would return to the streets.
Some people may not understand why a mentally challenged woman would be deemed worthy of becoming the muse of a National Artist such as Ben Cabrera, but the artist within Ben Cabrera saw something so beguiling in Sabel. He started to observe Sabel and, as his interest grew on the subject, he started sketching her and taking photos of her. As what Ben Cabrera said, “I saw a lot of things in her — not only the human side, but also the abstract side.” To him, Sabel is a symbol of dislocation, despair, and isolation – the personification of human dignity hurdled by circumstances. Ben Cabrera saw Sabel as a work of art so enchanting yet so ephemeral that he just had to immortalize her by creating passionate illustrations of her. There’s no proof that Ben Cabrera had any romantic feelings for Sabel, but seeing how Ben Cabrera’s passion for Sabel translates in every illustration he made of her, one can’t help but ask the question, “Was Ben in love with Sabel?” Maybe Ben Cabrera did fall in love with her, maybe he did not. We will never know the answer and all we can ever do is wonder.
Whenever BenCab was inspired to make transitions and create something new, he found himself working on “Sabel.” BenCab said on Lifestyle Inquirer that, “What I do now is to extend the variations — Sabel as Japanese or Chinese, Sabel as a metal sculpture, or even as totally abstract painting. But people see a lot of things in her.” BenCab’s Sabel has given an opportunity to portray and give life to Sabel on stage featuring Iza Calzado and members of the Philippine Ballet Theatre as a form of musical in celebration of BenCab’s 50 years in the world of art. The musical was staged last April 30, 2015 at The Theatre in Solaire under the music and musical direction by Louie Ocampo and direction, book, and lyrics by Freddie Santos.
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