Leon Gallery’s recent Asian Cultural Council Auction 2026, held Valentine’s Day, marked 11 years of viable partnership between the auction house and the Asian Cultural Council Philippines (ACCP). The annual benefit art auction, Leon Gallery’s opening salvo in 2026, was built on a shared interest in advancing the virtuosity of Filipino artists and their expansion to new horizons abroad for continuing cultural dialogues.
The progressive partnership between Leon Gallery and the ACCP has produced more than 40 grantees across painting, sculpture, music, dance, theater, art criticism, art conservation, and museology.
Leon Gallery director Jaime Ponce de Leon said, “The spirit of collaboration ran deep in this year’s edition of the ACC auction.
“Now in our 11th year of partnership with our friends from the ACC Philippines Foundation, our annual benefit art auction marked our continuing mission and passion of endowing the gift of love and generosity by remaining committed to championing the Filipino artist.”
To give back to the artistic and cultural community, proceeds of the ACCP auction will be allotted to its grantees.
Eight Filipino artists are pursuing their ACC study grants in the US, including Aina Ramolete (Master of Fine Arts, Major in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut) and Alain de Asis (Master of Music, Major in Violin Performance at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University). Joyce Sahagun Garcia and Maria Estela Paiso (film, photography, and video) and Karl Jingco (theater) are on six-month New York scholarships.
Two other ACCP grantees will fly to the US in July to pursue scholarships: J-mee Katanyag, artistic director of the Philippine Educational Theater Association, who will be on a six-month grant in New York, and Alexa Torte, a contemporary dance artist, choreographer, and educator from the University of the Philippines, who will pursue a two-year graduate program at the Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Just this January, theater artists Toni Go (artist-director at Tanghalang Pilipino) and Joshua Lim-So (playwright-director) completed their six-month New York fellowships.
These talented artists follow in the footsteps of great Filipino artists who took the ACC grants, led by National Artist Jose T. Joya, the first Filipino ACC grantee in visual arts.
Ponce de Leon noted that the “major highlights for this year’s ACC auction also underscore the remarkable collaborations between our esteemed Filipino artists.”
The highlight of the well-attended auction was the record-breaking sale of a rare, first-edition copy of Dr. Jose Rizal’s El Filibusterismo, signed and dedicated to his fellow ilustrado, Don Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera. At P25,536,000 (inclusive of buyer’s premium), this copy of El Fili became the most expensive book ever sold in the country.
It also broke Leon Gallery’s own record set with the sale of a first edition copy of Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, dedicated also to Pardo de Tavera, that sold for P22.8 million in September 2025.
The ‘Fili’ broke Leon Gallery’s own record set with the sale of a first edition copy of Rizal’s ‘Noli,’ sold for P22.8 million in September 2025
Ponce de Leon noted that the sale of the Fili is made even more extraordinary because it is “most likely the last signed and dedicated copy in private hands.”
Leon Gallery consultant and former National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) chairwoman Lisa Guerrero Nakpil noted, “This edition’s unique value comes from the national hero’s signature added below a dedication to Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera. Signed September 16, 1891, it predates the commonly known printing date and is literally the press’ first copy. Rizal held this very book, personally sending Pardo de Tavera a message with it.”
Another auction highlight is Fray Pedro Murillo Velarde’s Historia de la Provincia de Philipinas de la Compañia de Jesus, which includes a most coveted reproduction of the Jesuit priest’s historic Mapa de las Yslas Filipinas, dubbed “the mother of all Philippine maps” and the first scientific map of the country. With the book, which recounts the Jesuits’ history and missions in the Philippine archipelago, this mid-18th-century artifact went for P4,370,000, making this particular copy of the historic map the most expensive for its size.
Fray Pedro Murillo Velarde’s historic ‘Mapa de las Yslas Filipinas’
The Murillo Velarde Map is notable for its role in the Philippines’ landmark 2016 legal victory at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands against China’s territorial aggressions in the West Philippine Sea.
The sale of leading historian and educator Professor Ambeth R. Ocampo’s 18th-century santos also yielded strong results, with the Lumban-type image of the Inmaculada Concepcion, noted for its rarity and dimensions (the tallest of its kind to enter the market), selling for an impressive P2,162,880. The successive solid showings of Dr. Ocampo’s collection in Leon Gallery auctions since 2024 have solidified Leon Gallery’s standing as the premier auction house for the country’s most prominent historian today.
Don Benito Legarda Jr.’s Grotrian-Steinweg Nachf grand piano
Don Benito Legarda Jr.’s Grotrian-Steinweg Nachf grand piano also brought in P2,643,520.
Malang’s first interaction painting with his sons, Steve and Soler
The mural-sized paintings attained outstanding results. Malang’s first interaction painting with his sons, Steve and Soler, that marked the new millennium, hit P11,415,200, while the Sanggawa Group of Artists’ Paglaom Padayon, which pays homage to Botong Francisco’s iconic 1964 mural, Filipino Struggles Throughout History, brought in P10,814,400.
Danilo Dalena’s ‘America’
Danilo Dalena’s America, the only surviving work of his Port Authority Series that would have embodied his satirical impressions of the America he first visited and witnessed in the late ’90s, was sold for P10,213,600, setting a benchmark price for Dalena, who Ponce de Leon declared as a strong candidate as the country’s next national artist for the visual arts.
