Behind-the-Scenes / Exhibitions: Emerging curator Q&A with Tahnee Ann Macabali Pantig

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For the final week of Museum Month AGOinsider connected with first-time curator Tahnee Ann Macabali Pantig, who is making her debut with the AGO’s new exhibition Faith and Fortune: Art from Across the Spanish Empire. 

Image courtesy of Tahnee Ann Macabali Pantig.

Brooklyn-based artist and designer Tahnee Ann Macabali Pantig is digging deep into her Filipinx ancestry for her curatorial debut in the new AGO exhibition Faith and Fortune: Art from Across the Spanish Empire, opening June 8. Born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, Pantig has drawn much of her artistic inspiration from her parent’s immigration story and her time spent within Toronto’s Filipinx community. Her curatorial contribution to the exhibition – which features works from Latin America, the Philippines and Spain made between 1492 and 1898 – is a large installation of historical daguerreotype photographs from the Philippines. 

For our final week of Museum Month, AGOinsider connected with Pantig to get more insight about her Filipinx heritage, her upbringing in Scarborough, and how her desire to shape narratives about people from the Philippines  led to her debut as a curator.  

AGOinsider: As a first-time curator, what was your curatorial approach to Faith and Fortune? What did you draw on and what were you inspired by?  

Pantig: My curatorial approach to Faith and Fortune is very much based on my lived experiences being born and raised in Scarborough, in the Toronto Filipinx community. I’ve drawn much of my inspiration from my parents’ migration stories from Pampanga and Baguio City in the Philippines; what was it like for them coming to Canada? What stories did they see of themselves? What stories did they not see? I was also inspired by my own experiences growing up in Toronto and not feeling like I had stories about being Filipinx reflected back to me. Through this show I set out to create the type of representation I would have loved to have seen as a young person in this city.  

Read the full interview, HERE.

Faith and Fortune: Art from Across the Spanish Empire opens June 8. Join Curators Adam Harris Levine and Tahnee Pantig and Interpretive Planner Gillian McIntyre for an online conversation on Saturday June 11, at 2pm. More details about this free, pre-registered talk (which is being livestreamed) can be found HERE. Book your complimentary ticket, today.