Carlo Herrera

Joseph Carlo Herrera (born December 3, 1994) is a Filipino writer, curator, and menswear designer. He currently serves as the head curator of the Museum of the Women of Malolos.

Early life and education

Herrera was born in Mandaluyong City, Philippines on December 3, 1994. He attended and graduated high school at De La Salle Santiago Zobel School, in Muntinlupa City, Philippines. He developed an interest in writing and began his career as a sportswriter at sixteen. He went on to attend the Ateneo de Manila University for his undergraduate studies; receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with a major in Art Management in 2017. In 2015, he studied Fashion Design and Marketing under Diesel's Erica Charles, and Fabrics and Fibres under the International Wool Secretariat's Veronica Shattuck, at the University of the Arts London: Central Saint Martins.

Curatorial work

Herrera specializes in the curation and preservation of cultural heritage homes and lifestyle museums.^[1]

Herrera, a fifth-generation grandson of Alberta Uitangcoy-Santos, matriarch of the Uitangcoy-Santos House in Malolos, Bulacan, drafted blueprints for the recuration of the Uitangcoy-Santos House's private museum, the Museum of the Women of Malolos, after he had found that the conditions of the museum and its exhibits were unsatisfactory after a visit to his family's estate.

After defining his plans for its restructuring, Herrera was named head curator of the museum by the owners and the usufructuary, and temporarily closed the museum to begin work on the estate by conducting physical repairs, restoring and preserving the museum's decaying articles, recurating the permanent collection, and opening more exhibit halls after clearing out debris stuffed in the home.

On March 12, 2017, Herrera reopened the museum with a newly furnished and restored interior, along with world-class preservation units.^[2] Herrera launched a new tour program which he had produced and conducted himself for the museum and estate. The tours included a comprehensive lecture, visits to all four exhibit halls and two other heritage structures, and an interactive food-tasting exhibit of Alberta Uitangcoy's recipes prepared by Malolos locals. Tickets to the tours were sold via Herrera's website throughout February 2017, and were sold out in three weeks.

Herrera's efforts received a unanimous perfect score from a panel of museological experts from the art programs of the Ateneo de Manila University, the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, the University of the Philippines, and the Philippine Museum of Contemporary Art and Design.^[3]

He has also previously worked on contemporary installations; including Matter/Real―an experimental materials exhibition at the University of the Philippines.^[4]

Writing career

Herrera gained initial recognition for his individual work on The Carlo Chronicles―an avant-garde and slightly controversial blog that he established in 2009 and maintained until early in 2012.

Specializing in sports, Herrera wrote numerous pieces for Bleacher Report in San Francisco; covering boxing, basketball and soccer. He reached a career-high readership rate after superstar boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. publicly recognized one of his feature write-ups^[5] on his Twitter account.^[6]

His breakout project came by working with Nike Basketball as the Philippines' official Kobe Insider, playing the role of an exclusive field reporter and writer for NBA superstar Kobe Bryant's Take Every Advantage Manila Tour in 2011 after his blog was read by marketing executives at Nike.^[7]

Carlo has since written features for Manila Bulletin's Garage Magazine from November 2014 to August 2015

Awards and nominations

References