MONSOON SOUTHEAST ASIA COLLECTION (/mon'su:n/)
Michelangelo and Lourdes Samson have collected Southeast Asian contemporary art for almost two decades. The collection currently includes paintings, sculptures, installations, and digital media works by contemporary artists based in, or who identify culturally with, the countries in this region, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The collection offers a glimpse into this dynamic region, threading the issues, artistic concerns, and themes shared across these borders while celebrating the stories and perspectives that make each culture unique. Many of the works in the collection engage with themes of power and politics, identity and the self, and tradition and contemporaneity.
The decision to rename the collection as MONSOON SOUTHEAST ASIA COLLECTION stems from a desire to establish it as an entity separate from the founders while still reflecting a very strong sense of place which is the focus of the collection. Monsoon includes most of the letters in the founders’ surname but more importantly, it is a weather pattern associated with countries in this region. It connotes convergence and flow, symbolic of the patterns of migration and cultural exchanges that occurred here for many centuries and continue in the present.
Michelangelo K. Samson
Michelangelo K. Samson has been a banker for over twenty-five years. In that time, he has worked with clients across diverse industries including, private equity, real estate, insurance and banking, clean technology, energy and natural resources, technology, consumer goods, and infrastructure.
Together with his wife, Lourdes, he has built an important collection of contemporary art from Southeast Asia. The collection reflects the diverse artistic practices and conceptual concerns of artists in the region, with a strong emphasis on post-colonial discourses and material strategies.
He is presently the Chief Executive Officer of a bank in the Philippines. He splits his time between Manila and Singapore.
Lourdes A. Samson
Lourdes Samson is Deputy Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila, a leading contemporary art museum, recognised for outstanding exhibitions that reflect global perspectives in contemporary art while being firmly anchored to local contexts of the Philippines.
Prior to moving to Manila in 2023, she was a co-founder of SEED THE ART SPACE, a non-profit independent art space in Singapore. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern University and an MA in Asian Art History at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore.
Get in Touch With Us
Subscribe and Stay Updated with us!
If you like to stay updated on the latest news about the collection, please enter your emai.