In one interview, the economist and art collector Benito Legarda maintains that Zobel was one of the first few who took the study of Philippine culture seriously. Meditating on the meaning of the phrase, “Filipino artistic expression,” Zobel writes in 1953: “The trouble is that, at this early stage of the search, we are not quite sure what we mean by the words.” Zobel was not content to point merely to Philippine subject matter, or the use of Philippine materials. He noted the slippage of the term “expression” and offered no easy answers, but he brought the problem to academic attention.