Image A set of arm ornaments. Credit... Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Gold was always plentiful in the Philippines, readily collected by panning. Today the country is said to have the world’s second richest gold deposits. When the Spanish landed, they found natives sporting much gold jewelry and regalia. Illustrations in a book from around 1590 called “The Boxer Codex,” on view in the exhibition, depict indigenous people wearing ostentatious gold adornments over flowing, colorful garments. But the Spanish colonizers wasted little time in decimating the native cultures and making off with their gold, which they melted down for their own purposes.

Image A chastity cover. Credit... Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The first modern discoveries of precolonial gold were made by the French explorer Alfred Marche, who, in 1881, uncovered about 10 pieces in wooden coffins and Chinese export jars in burial sites on the island of Marinduque. (By carbon dating the ceramic vessels that gold pieces were regularly found buried in, archaeologists later determined that most of the gold that has come to light was produced from the 10th through the 13th centuries.)

More gold artifacts turned up here and there over the ensuing decades, but it was not until a hundred years later that the next major find occurred. One day in April 1981, a heavy machinery operator named Edilberto Morales was working on an irrigation project in Surigao del Sur province in the island of Mindanao when he accidentally unearthed a metal bowl, which turned out to be made of gold. That partly dented, elegantly simple vessel is in the exhibition. During the rest of the day, Mr. Morales uncovered many more gold pieces – 22 pounds’ worth – of what came to be known as the Surigao Treasure.

Looters quickly flocked to the site, scooping up untold numbers of objects that they sold to dealers and collectors, effectively destroying much archaeological evidence. Mr. Morales and his family went into hiding for fear of thieves and kidnappers interested in his sudden presumptive wealth.