THE DEAN of the iACADEMY’s School of Design and the Arts, Jon Cuyson, travelled to Austria to study the archived ethnological collection from the Philippines at the Welt Museum in Vienna.

Established in 1876, the Welt Museum Wien in Vienna is the largest anthropological museum in Austria. It is located in the Hofburg Imperial Palace and houses more than 400,000 ethnographical and archaeological objects from Asia, Africa, Oceania and America.

Cuyson was given a tour by the museum curator, Reinhard Blumauer, for a private viewing.

“I am honored to be given access to the vast collection of the museum as this will provide me with a deeper understanding of the colonial history between Austria and the Philippines that not many know about. I want to express my gratitude to the Weltmuseum for this opportunity to explore my own culture’s past under the lens of the present,” he said.

In the virtual roundtable talk House of Hearts Special, Cuyson was joined by multidisciplinary artists across the Pacific and Indian Ocean where they shared their undertakings in arts, culture, music, and dance.

Cuyson presented his work “Dancing The Shrimp” to the group, where his investigations on the 17th century Filipino settlement in the bayous of Louisiana culminated in a solo exhibition at the UP Vargas Museum in 2016 with Dr. Patrick Flores.

Cuyson has participated in exhibitions in New York and Europe since 2004. His works employ different techniques and media including texts, photographs, drawings, artist books, paintings and installations.