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MCAD’s ‘Funding the Future 2025’ Aims to Fund Five Years of Gallery Initiatives
The Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila will be launching Funding the Future 2025, a series of fundraising events that aims to raise money for the programming and future plans of the gallery.
Done in partnership with Leon Gallery, the fundraising events include a benefit dinner and an accompanying exhibition showcasing items to be auctioned off. Most of the items for sale were donated by artist-supporters who feel strongly about helping keep the museum free and accessible to the public.
“I support MCAD because I truly believe in what it stands for: a free, inclusive space for dialogue and discovery through art,” art patron and Planning Committee member Pam Gonzales Lopez said. “I love that MCAD is a non-collecting museum, which means it stays fresh and experimental, bringing world-class exhibitions to Manila while supporting living artists.”
Benefit Dinner and Auction
Funding the Future 2025 and its central benefit dinner and auction will be done at the MCAD building itself. The package of dinner includes a limited-edition artwork keepsake made by Filipino-Canadian artist Lani Maestro and visual artist Neo Maestro.
Patrons and collectors will be regailed with a collaborative menu by Chefs Stephan Duhesme of Metiz and Automat, Miko Calo of Coquette and Taqueria Franco, and Josh Boutwood of Helm and Ember. Entertainment for the night will include a performance by singer Armi Millare, formerly of Up Dharma Down.
All in all, close to forty artists will be providing works to be auctioned off to the public. This includes well-known artists like Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Lesley-Anne Cao, Corinne De San Jose, Dex Fernandez, and Gary-Ross Pastrana.
Some legendary artists and artworks will also be on the floor, many with works not available before in the public. This includes Pacita Abad’s “Make Love Not War!”, Manuel Ocampo’s “The Vampire from Tel Aviv,” Lui Medina’s “Untitled (Land Studies) IV,” and Miguel Lorenzo Uy’s “Abstraction (after Cosmic Dance, supernova).”
All of these can be seen during the accompanying weeklong exhibition for Funding the Future 2025, which is open to the public from November 9 to 16.
Where ‘Funding the Future 2025’ Will Go To
MCAD’s last auction in 2018 helped raise enough funds to pay for the gallery’s initiative up until recently. For the 2025 edition, they aim to raise at least five more years of funding. This will go into their curated exhibits, as well as other programs like MCAD Publications, which aim to publish pieces that “promote the generation and propagation of new ideas in contemporary art and design.”
Other programs that will benefit include MCAD Commons, their off-site, “collaborative exhibition platform” that brings the museum’s exhibits to different places across the country, and Curatorial Conversations, their annual mentorship program for young art curators in the country.
“[Funding the Future 2025] really shows us how interconnected all the elements of the ecosystem are, from the artists, the institutions like MCAD, as well as the audiences,” Deputy Director of MCAD Lourdes Samson said. “So we all need to come together to ensure the future of contemporary art. This is a way that the community gathers and supports each other.”
The auction and benefit dinner of Funding the Future 2025 will happen on November 15. You can reserve tickets on this website. The concurrent exhibition will run in MCAD until November 16.
Photos provided by the gallery.
Related reading: ‘Moments of Delay’ Meditates on the Realities of Contemporary Art
Frequently Asked Questions
A non-collecting museum is an institution that does not maintain a permanent collection of artworks. Instead of investing capital into the acquisition, storage, and conservation of physical objects, MCAD directs its resources toward temporary, world-class exhibitions and public programming. This model allows the museum to stay “fresh and experimental,” focusing on supporting living artists and fostering a space for dialogue rather than functioning as a repository for historical artifacts.
Because MCAD is free and open to the public, it relies on major fundraising cycles rather than ticket sales. The 2025 edition—which follows a successful 2018 auction—aims to secure at least five years of operational funding. This ensures that the museum can continue to provide “world-class exhibitions to Manila” without financial barriers for the audience, maintained by the support of nearly forty artists who donated their works for the auction.
MCAD Commons is a collaborative exhibition platform that operates outside the museum’s main gallery in Manila. It is designed to bring MCAD’s specialized programming to a wider, national audience. By utilizing off-site spaces that respond to their specific local contexts, MCAD Commons moves contemporary art beyond the “neutral container” of a traditional gallery, engaging different communities across the Philippines in research, art practice, and curatorial exchange.
MCAD Publications act as a technical and intellectual anchor for the museum’s exhibitions. They publish catalogues, monographs, and digests (such as the monograph for Pacita Abad) that document the context and process of contemporary art. These materials are essential for the “generation and propagation of new ideas,” providing a permanent record of experimental works that, due to the museum’s non-collecting nature, may not be physically preserved in a single location.
The fundraising event is a high-level “interconnected ecosystem” featuring:
Artists: Auction items include works by legendary names like Pacita Abad and Manuel Ocampo, as well as contemporary figures like Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan and Miguel Lorenzo Uy.
Culinary Chefs: A collaborative menu designed by Stephan Duhesme (Metiz), Miko Calo (Coquette), and Josh Boutwood (Helm).
Entertainment: A performance by singer Armi Millare, emphasizing the integration of various creative disciplines to support the future of contemporary art.
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