By: Irish Bernardez-Yazon, Ayala Foundation
Not long ago, Aprille Tijam received an award for 20 years of service at the Ayala Foundation. Aprille has spent her entire 30-year career as a dedicated cultural worker. But it was by chance that she took this path. Little did she know that when her former classmate invited her to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, she would end up dedicating her life to something she hadn’t even considered a real career path.
Aprille currently serves as the Head of Ayala Museum, as well its Associate Director and Head of Exhibitions and Collections. Most recently, she was appointed member of the Board of Trustees of the Nayong Pilipino Foundation.
“I love what I do,” Aprille says. “I enjoy everything that I do, from the nitty gritty to connecting with communities and stakeholders. I love meeting artists and different people every time.”
Aprille’s journey to a life of service in the arts has been filled with happy accidents. Taking a course in the arts at the University of the Philippines was a spur-of-the-moment choice for her at a time when nursing was the popular option.
She was part of the pioneer batch at UP, and the experience exposed her to the world of museums and to curatorship and collections management. Coincidentally, one of her teachers was Kenneth Esguerra, who later became a curator and colleague at the Ayala Museum.
Aprille would then go on to work for both private and government museums, joining Met when she hadn’t even finished her degree. Having struggled with her thesis, she decided to take a break from her studies to take the job as Education Assistant. She eventually completed her degree in 2003.
She would go on to work at Ayala Museum, where she started out as a Consultant for Education Programs. And the rest was history, quite literally.
Passion in motion
Behind the pristine objects on display at the museum, each meticulously arranged and thoughtfully presented, are the unseen hours of work that staff put in. With so many moving parts to manage, including assets and stakeholders, the work often continues well after hours.
“There is no clear line for me. It’s not like a regular 9-to-6 where you shut off after work,” Aprille says. She means this in a good way, explaining that her job and her passions are deeply interconnected.
When asked about what gives her energy, she says that even outside work, she still loves going to museums. On special occasions, Aprille usually organizes trips to museums for her family, making sure to bring her nieces and nephews along. So much so that her family sometimes tells her jokingly, “Ate, museum na naman?”
She shares that she didn’t get to have this kind of exposure to arts and culture growing up in the province, which is why she’s always keen to share these experiences with her family.
Even on her travels, trips to the museum are always on Aprille’s itinerary. A self-confessed tsundoku—one who accumulates books and leaves them piled up unread—she also loves picking up museum books for her personal collection when she travels. To justify the investment, she explains that there aren’t many books on museology, collections management, or conservation readily available in the Philippines. And she’s always happy to share her books, eager to help her colleagues hone their craft. In her spare time, Aprille also writes about her insights from her work. She regularly contributes to publications of the British Museum-International Training Programme, where she was a fellow in 2019. For her 30th anniversary passion project, she plans to write a book where she documents exhibitions and projects she’s worked on.
Leaving room for curiosity
Asked about her favorite Ayala Museum collection, Aprille takes pause and says: “It’s really quite difficult to say, ‘Oh, I prefer this artwork or this object better than another object.’”
She’s not one to choose favorites, she says. Instead, she prefers to leave room for curiosity.
“Each has its own distinctive qualities that you can appreciate once you focus on each of them,” she adds.
This same curiosity led her to conduct a five-year research on the graphic art of Fernando Zóbel in London in the United Kingdom, and in Madrid and Cuenca in Spain. This was prompted by her serendipitous discovery of Zóbel’s donation to the British Museum-Department of Prints and Drawing. The result: the exhibition “Finding Zóbel Prints” currently on view at the Ayala Museum.
In the same spirit, the Ayala Museum’s latest exhibition, “Amorsolo: Chroma,” also invites audiences to rediscover the Philippines’ first National Artist, Fernando Amorsolo. The interactive exhibition, set to run until September 7, 2025, reintroduces the genius of Amorsolo to a new generation of Filipinos in a fresh and engaging way.
Aprille notes that the exhibit’s curator, Tenten Mina, took a different approach, designing with interactivity and inclusivity in mind. The interactive section features digital stations that allow guests to see Amorsolo’s works from the point of view of those affected by color vision deficiency. Guests can also explore how color works in both art and technology as well as their own perception of color through hands-on experiences such as paint-by-color walls, coloring stations, and light room.
Aprille invites those visiting the museum to look at Amorsolo’s art with fresh eyes and be open to connecting with what they see. “You might realize, I didn’t feel this kind of emotion when I looked at this Amorsolo painting before.”
What keeps her thriving
Reflecting on what keeps her going, Aprille says, “It really warms the heart when someone tells me they enjoyed seeing our exhibitions. It makes all the effort worth it.”
The more she talks about her work, the more energized she gets. “I’m very grateful that I ended up in this practice,” Aprille says. She is thankful for all of her experiences and the people she has met along the way, including her mentors and colleagues who have all shaped who she is today.
Ever the advocate of arts and culture, Aprille adds, “That’s why there’s that passion in me to pay it forward in the little ways that I’m able to.” When Aprille accepted her first museum job all those years ago, she never imagined that the chance invitation would end up becoming a lifelong devotion to the arts. But from the way that Aprille lives and breathes her work, whether on or off the clock, it’s clear that she is exactly where she is meant to be.
