This exhibition seeks to illuminate our transpacific heritage generated by regional and global maritime exchanges from prehistory to the Spanish and early American colonial periods when ancient trade networks in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea stretched across the Pacific to Latin America, North America, and Europe.

Manila was the Asian fulcrum of this early global exchange, playing a key role in complex, multidirectional circulations of cultures whose impact survives in the material cultures of Asia, Europe, and the Americas to this day.

Curated by Florina Capistrano-Baker, Ph.D.