"The Philippines has a great excitement, namely that a lot still has to be done," Fernando Zobel in 1962 writes to one of his Filipino friends. "This too is the great drawback. Nothing is given, everything must be made. I've sweated this one out for ten years and know what I'm talking about. You must create not only paintings but the people that go with them."

Zobel was alluding to his first attempts, in 1954, at creating a museum of modern art in the Philippines. His associates in Manila's art world were at first thrilled with the prospect. Studies were made, but as one meeting followed another, enthusiasm declined. At the last meeting, with only three people including Zobel showing up, Zobel stood on a chair and wrote on the wall: "Do we want a museum?" The project was abandoned.