An Inside Look at HABI: Yale’s Philippine Textile Exhibit

In October, visitors to the Henry R. Luce Hall common room found the walls hung with handwoven cloth in a range of colors, patterns, and textures. HABI: A Philippine Textile Exhibit was on view to mark the Council on Southeast Asia Studies’ observance of Filipino American History Month.

The exhibit was organized by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies and the Yale Peabody Museum with the Philippine Consulate General in New York and the Philippine Trade and Investment Center in New York. It includes T’nalak, piña seda, Kantarines, Pinilian, Kankanaey, Hablon, and Pigi textiles, made by Indigenous communities and artisans across the Philippines. The opening featured a virtual talk by Dr. Analyn Salvador Amores of the University of the Philippines Baguio on efforts to revive and preserve Philippine ikat weaving, as well as remarks from consulate representatives and Yale faculty and staff.

We spoke with Louward Allen Zubiri, Lector in Filipino, and Charmaine Wong, Collections Manager for Pacific Ethnology at the Yale Peabody Museum, about how the exhibit came together and what it offered visitors.
 

How did the idea for the exhibit come about?

Louward Allen Zubiri: The Philippine Consulate General in New York serves the Northeast, including Connecticut, and works with universities across the region to support Philippine language and cultural initiatives, including at Cornell, Harvard, and, more recently, Brown.

HABI grew out of an initiative by former Consul General Senen T. Mangalile, who discussed the idea in spring 2025 with representatives of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, including Chair Erik Harms, Charmaine Wong of the Yale Peabody Museum, and Ruth Barnes of the Yale University Art Gallery.

During my official visit to the consulate in fall 2025, I presented the state and direction of Yale’s Filipino Program and revisited the idea. At the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, I had seen how a partnership with the Philippine Consulate General in Honolulu could advance Filipino language and cultural programming. With the support of my chair, Erik Harms, I worked with Charmaine to secure the institutional collaboration the project needed. We then approached the MacMillan Center to host HABI at Luce Hall during Filipino American History Month in October 2026.

Why is this exhibit significant now?

Zubiri: HABI addresses the relative underrepresentation of Philippine material culture in Yale’s cultural and academic spaces. What sets it apart is that it connects textiles held by Philippine community and cultural institutions with objects preserved in Yale’s museums and galleries. Bringing them together invites reflection on how cultural objects are collected, represented, interpreted, and sustained. It also creates new opportunities for object-based teaching and interdisciplinary research.

The exhibit also connects to Yale’s own history of Philippine Studies. Harold Conklin, a founder of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, was known for his ethnographic studies of the languages, cultures, and indigenous agricultural systems of the Philippines, particularly among the Hanunoo of Mindoro and the Ifugao of the Cordillera. His fieldwork contributed to a substantial ethnographic collection now housed at the Yale Peabody Museum. Both Mindoro and the Cordillera are renowned for their textile and weaving traditions. HABI is a chance to reconnect the university’s collections and scholarly legacy with the living communities and knowledge systems behind them.

You’ve been instrumental in developing Yale’s Filipino language and Philippine Studies offerings. What would you like prospective students to know about your courses?

Zubiri: As a linguist specializing in language acquisition and reclamation, I see learning Filipino as more than learning another language. It is a way of engaging worldviews shaped by generations of knowledge, experience, and practice. Our courses create spaces where heritage and non-heritage learners alike can explore the archipelagic and diasporic Philippines through language, research, and cultural discovery.

Filipino@Yale has grown from a student-led initiative into an institutionalized program. It now offers a five-course sequence from Elementary to Advanced Filipino, plus opportunities for independent study in Philippine Studies. Beyond the classroom, I work with students, including those in Kasama, to create more ways to engage with Philippine histories, identities, and cultures. The exhibit is a recent example.

How are the textiles arranged, and what was your curatorial process?

Charmaine Wong: The textiles are arranged by color, pattern, and texture. I first thought we could organize them by region, culture, or textile type, but the variation in what was available made that impractical. Once we settled on visual and textural attributes, my colleague Alin Maria Jimenez and I worked out a layout for each wall. We matched complementary colors and patterns and added textural pieces where a wall felt too flat. We spent several hours debating which textiles went where, and I think everything came together nicely.

Was there anything about the textiles that surprised or struck you?

Wong: I was struck by the diversity of materials, from cotton, silk, and rayon to local plant fibers such as abaca (banana fiber) and piña (pineapple fiber). The materials and their combinations produce a range of textures, weaves, sheens, and rigidity that are unique to each textile.

Photos from the installation and opening event are available in the exhibit gallery.