A monumental exhibition reconnecting Mexico, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia
Galo B. Ocampo, Moro Dance, 1946. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of the National Heritage Board, Singapore.
Opening at the Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City, ‘The Acapulco–Manila Galleon: We Are the Pacific. A World Born of the Tropics’ presents more than 300 rare objects to illuminate one of the earliest and most influential transoceanic networks in world history. Spanning 4 December 2025 to 31 May 2026, the exhibition moves far beyond the familiar stories of global trade to reveal a dynamic world shaped by mobility, encounter, and exchange across the Pacific Ocean.
For 250 years, from 1565 to 1815, the galleons sailing between Acapulco and Manila stitched Asia and the Americas into a single circulatory system. Silver, porcelain, lacquerware, textiles, people, languages, recipes, botanical knowledge, spiritual practices, and worldviews all crossed these waters, transforming life on both shores. In this landmark exhibition, visitors are invited to understand this route not only as an economic corridor but as a vast cultural ecosystem whose legacies continue to shape contemporary identities.
Initially conceived by Clement Onn for the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, the Mexico City edition brings together curatorial voices from Mexico, Singapore, and the Philippines: Iván Valdéz-Bubnov, Roberto Junco, Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, Teo Hui Min, Cheng Jia Yun, and Seline Illana Teo, in collaboration with the Colegio de San Ildefonso. Their collective approach foregrounds Mexico as an axis mundi — a pivotal node in a global network long before globalisation had a name.
Mapping the Pacific Before Empire
The exhibition opens with We Are the Pacific, establishing the deep cultural histories that predate the galleon route. Through archaeological material, early maps, illustrations, and ritual objects, the section reveals how communities in Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia shaped their environments, read the sea, and developed forms of spirituality, agriculture, and navigation rooted in water. Rather than portraying the Pacific as an empty frontier later “discovered,” the exhibition restores these worlds as thriving, interconnected civilisations.
This framing also highlights the Indigenous infrastructures that enabled transoceanic exchange. Long before Spanish ships crossed the Pacific, these cultures had cultivated their own trade networks, maritime knowledge, and visual languages. By placing these histories at the beginning, the exhibition challenges Eurocentric narratives and affirms that the galleon story emerged from a much older web of movement.
Routes, Rituals, and Global Economies
A significant portion of the show reconstructs the maritime world created by the galleons. Shipbuilding tools, navigational instruments, documents, and a rare 1:32 historically accurate Manila galleon model reveal the astonishing logistics behind transpacific voyaging. In the shipyards of New Spain, diverse crews — Indigenous, African, Asian, European — built the vessels that would connect continents. Their labour, creativity, and ingenuity form an often-overlooked foundation of globalisation.
Objects drawn from both Mexican and Southeast Asian traditions speak to the hybrid cultures formed across the route. Visitors encounter Ming porcelain and Japanese lacquerware, mother-of-pearl-inlaid chests, New Spanish textiles, devotional sculptures carved by Chinese and Filipino artists, and enconchados that blend Indigenous, Asian, and European techniques. These pieces demonstrate how commerce often blurred into aesthetic exchange, with artisans responding to the tastes, beliefs, and materials circulating across the Pacific.
A dedicated section delves into the first truly global trading system. Mexican silver — the economic engine of the galleon route — flowed into Asian markets, while silk, spices, carved ivory, furniture, and everyday manufactured goods travelled in return. Here, the exhibition highlights Mexico’s role as a maritime nation whose ports, fortifications, and cosmopolitan cities were transformed through constant movement.
A highlight is Mission Hasekura, recounting the 1613–1620 diplomatic journey of the samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga from Japan to New Spain and onward to Europe. Though politically unsuccessful, the mission represents one of the earliest attempts to forge a direct link between Japan and Mexico. Portraits, archival documents, and diplomatic gifts illustrate how this journey anticipated later transpacific solidarities.
The galleon era concludes with its dissolution in 1815 amid shifting empires and Mexico’s War of Independence. The exhibition traces how the collapse of the route reshaped Mexico’s relationship to Asia — a connection that would only be restored decades later through new treaties and migrations.
Diorama of the Parian Scene. Courtesy of Asian Civilisations Museum
Tropical Modernisms Across Continents
The final third of the exhibition turns to the 20th century, drawing from National Gallery Singapore’s acclaimed Tropical research project. This section argues that the Pacific’s history is not only commercial and colonial, but also artistic and conceptual — a shared space where Southeast Asian and Latin American artists forged parallel modernisms.
Works by Galo B. Ocampo, Carlos “Botong” Francisco, S. Sudjojono, Hendra Gunawan, Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias, Latiff Mohidin, Patrick Ng, and others reveal striking resonances across regions. These artists rejected European academic traditions, asserting their cultural sovereignty through murals, landscapes, portraits, and experimental forms rooted in local histories and political struggles.
The Library of the Tropics casts Bali and Mexico as sites of desire, projection, and resistance. Archival books, posters, touristic ephemera, and paintings suggest how the “tropics” became a contested field — exoticised from afar yet reimagined by artists as spaces of autonomy, creativity, and critique.
The Pacific Today brings the story into the present, featuring contemporary artworks and testimonies that examine migration, hybrid identities, and the ongoing resonance of the galleon route. The exhibition positions the Pacific as a living bridge where memory, art, and community continue to circulate.
A Global Collaboration of Unprecedented Scale
The project assembles an extraordinary constellation of partners. From Singapore, the Asian Civilisations Museum and National Gallery Singapore present 80 works from the National Collection. Mexican institutions, including UNAM, INAH, INBAL, the Franz Mayer Museum, the Museo José Luis Bello y González, Casa Luis Barragán, the Bank of Mexico Museum, and the National Archives, contribute key loans. Additional works arrive from the Philippines via Ayala Museum and the Intramuros Administration, as well as from private collections.
Through this international collaboration, ‘We Are the Pacific’ becomes more than an exhibition. It is a cultural bridge — one that reconnects stories scattered across oceans and centuries, and reminds us that history is a shared, living tide.
‘The Acapulco–Manila Galleon: We Are the Pacific. A World Born of the Tropics runs from 4 December 2025 to 31 May 2026 at the Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City. For more on the exhibition, please visit the Colegio de San Ildefonso, the Asian Civilisations Museum, and the National Gallery Singapore.
