National Artist of the Philippines

The Order of National Artists of the Philippines (Tagalog: Orden ng mga Pambansang Alagad ng Sining ng Pilipinas) is an order bestowed by the President of the Philippines on Philippine nationals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine art. Members of the order are known as National Artists. Originally instituted as an award, it was elevated to the status of an order in 2003.
The order is administered by the Cultural Center of the Philippines by virtue of President Ferdinand Marcos's Proclamation No. 1001 of April 2, 1972, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. The first award was posthumously conferred on Filipino painter Fernando Amorsolo.
The order of the highest state honor is conferred on individuals deemed as having done much for their artistic field. Deserving individuals must have been recommended by both the Cultural Center and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts prior to receiving the award. Such people are then titled, by virtue of a Presidential Proclamation, as National Artist (Filipino: Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining), and are inducted into the order.
Categories under which National Artists can be recognized originally included:
However, National Artists have since been honored under new categories. The NCCA created the category of National Artist for Fashion Design when it nominated Ramon Valera, but subsumed that category under "Architecture, Design and Allied Arts". President Fidel V. Ramos issued an executive order creating the category of National Artist for Historical Literature before conferring the honor to Carlos Quirino.
The National Artists of the Philippines is based on broad criteria, as set forth by the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts:
Nominations are then submitted to the National Artist Secretariat which is created by the National Artist Award Committee; experts from different art fields then sit on a First Deliberation to prepare the short list of nominees. A Second Deliberation, which is a joint meeting of the Commissioners of the NCCA and the Board of Trustees of the CCP, decides on the final nominees. The list is then forwarded to the President of the Philippines, who, by Presidential Proclamation, proclaims the final nominees as members of the Order of National Artists.
^1 In May 2006, under the Arroyo administration, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) already conferred the award to Poe but the late actor's wife, Susan Roces refused to acknowledge it. President Aquino has approved and signed Proclamation 435 affirming the previous proclamation of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declaring the late movie icon Fernando Poe Jr. a National Artist, posthumously. The Poe family finally accepted the conferment on 16 August 2012. .
^2 Aguilar Alcuaz, Francisco, and Conde were all proclaimed in 2009 but the conferment of the order was delayed due to a controversy. The order was finally bestowed in a ceremony at Malacañang Palace in November 2013.
Since the establishment in 1972 of the order for artists who have contributed largely in their respective fields, government and non-government cultural organizations and educational institutes have nominated candidates deemed eligible and worthy of such recognition. Unfortunately, the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts does not reveal their deliberations and list of candidates received.
The following list features noted personalities nominated for their respective fields:
In August 2009, the conferment of the Order of National Artists on seven individuals by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became controversial when it was revealed that musician Ramon Santos had been dropped from the list of nominees short-listed in May that year by the selection committee, and that four other individuals had been nominated via "President's prerogative": Cecile Guidote-Alvarez (Theater), Carlo J. Caparas (Visual Arts and Film), Francisco Mañosa (Architecture), and Pitoy Moreno (Fashion Design).
Members of the Philippine art community–including a number of living members of the Order–protested that the proclamation politicised the title of National Artist, and made it "a way for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to accommodate her allies." Specific protests were raised regarding the nomination of Guidote-Alvarez, who was also executive director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, because it was purportedly a breach of protocol and delicadeza (propriety), and of Caparas, on the grounds that he was unqualified for nomination under both the Visual Arts and the Film categories. On July 16, 2013, the controversy finally ended after the Supreme Court of the Philippines voted 12-1-2 that voided the four proclamations.
On June 20, 2014, five years after he was originally shortlisted in 2009, Ramon Santos was finally conferred National Artist for Music by President Benigno S. Aquino III.