Archives: Activity

The Executive Committee is pleased to organise a visit to Para Site for a guided tour with the Curator, Michelle Wong, of ‘Reframing Strangeness: Ha Bik Chuen’s Motherboards and Collagraphs’, an exhibition that refocuses on Ha’s printmaking practice on the occasion of Ha’s 100th birth anniversary.

‘Motherboard’ is the term Hong Kong-based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) coined for his collagraph plates. Unlike computer motherboards, Ha’s creations are decidedly analogue. They are assembled from wood and other found material through a highly labour-intensive process. Throughout his life, Ha created over 100 motherboards and kept them away from public view. He used these motherboards to produce over 3,000 editioned collagraphs mostly in the 1970s and 1980s.

About Ha Bik Chuen

Ha Bik Chuen (1925-2009) was a Hong Kong-based artist who made prints, sculptures, collage books, and was also a prolific photographer.  He publicly showed prints and sculptures, but kept most of his photographs and all his collage books private.  In the 1960s, Ha became an artist and an active participant of the Hong Kong art scene by documenting exhibitions and events through photography.  His collection of visual materials forms a crucial part of Hong Kong’s cultural and art history.  Ha’s archive has become one of the key resources of writing Hong Kong art history.

About Michelle Wun Ting Wong

Michelle Wun Ting Wong completed her PhD studies in Art History at The University of Hong Kong in 2024, exploring the modernity emerging from Post WWII Hong Kong. From 2012–20 she was a researcher at Asia Art Archive (AAA), focusing on Hong Kong art history and histories of exchange and circulation through exhibitions and periodicals. Her curatorial projects include ‘Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys’ at Tai Kwun Contemporary (2021), ‘Afterglow’, Yokohama Triennale 2020, and 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016). Her writing has been published in Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945–1990 (2018), the journal Southeast of Now (2019) amongst others. Since 2022, she co-runs the independent art space New Park with artists South Ho Siu Nam and Billy HC Kwok. Wong’s PhD dissertation is an in-depth study of the work and life of Ha Bik Chuen and its relationship to the cultural modernity and artistic modernism emerging from mid-twentieth century Hong Kong. Before returning to graduate school at HKU, Wong was AAA’s lead researcher and part of an archivist team organising and digitising Ha’s archive, which has since become one of the key resources of writing Hong Kong art history. 

Please visit https://www.para-site.art/exhibitions/reframing-strangeness-ha-bik-chuens-motherboards-and-collagraphs/ for more information on this exhibition.

Photo credit: Para Site

The HKU Museum Society is delighted to invite Lee Mei-yin to present a lecture which offers participants a treasure trove of surprising materials used for clothing across cultures and history.

Dressed by Nature

The development of textile civilization has always been deeply intertwined with the utilization of natural resources. Beyond conventional materials such as silk, cotton, and hemp, many other animals and plants in nature can also be used. Different civilizations have shown remarkable adaptability in clothing materials. Ancient China mastered silk-making, while the Inuit in North America used seal intestine membranes for windproof and waterproof garments. In Jiangnan, palm fibers were used for raincoats, and in Madagascar, golden orb-weaving spider silk was woven into fabric to make capes and scarves.

After the lecture, join Ms. Lee and volunteers for a hands-on silk reeling workshop. Please allow sufficient time to participate.

「來自大自然的衣裳」

服飾文明的發展始終與自然資源的利用密不可分。除傳統認知的絲、棉、麻等材料外 ，大自然界中，還有很多動、植物都可以被利用。

全球各地文明都展現出適應性智慧：從中國古老的蠶絲工藝到北美洲北部的因紐特人(Inuit) 利用海豹腸膜製作的防風防水服飾；又從江南蓑衣使用的棕櫚纖維， 到非洲 馬達加斯加的金色球蜘蛛之金色蛛絲 ，可織成衣料 ，制成斗篷和圍巾。

講座完畢後，在老師及義工的帶領下，大家將體驗「繅絲」（或稱「抽絲剝繭」）的實作活動。敬希各位預留充足時間參與。

Speaker

Lee Mei-Yin’s areas of research include the history, art and costumes of the ethnic minorities of China, Buddhist art, Dunhuang art, silk and embroideries. She previously served as HKUSPACE guest lecturer (2000-2010), as well as a member of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee. She is currently a specially appointed research fellow of Dunhuang Academy, and Vice President of the Friends of Dunhuang (Hong Kong). She also serves on the Board of Dunhuang Grottoes Preservation and Research Foundation of China, and as an expert advisor to the public museums of Hong Kong.

講者簡介

李美賢女士的研究範圍包括中國少數民族（民族史與服飾）、佛像藝術、敦煌藝術、絲綢與刺繡（歷史與賞析）。曾任香港大學專業進修學院導師（2000-2010），香港非物質文化遺產諮詢委員會委員。現任敦煌研究院特聘研究員、香港敦煌之友副主席，也是中國敦煌石窟保護研究基金會理事、香港博物館之專家顧問。

Photo Credit to Lee Mei Yin

The HKU Museum Society is delighted to present a guided viewing of the exhibition Designing Jewels: 200 years of French Savoir-Faire (1770 – 1970) with Dr. Florian Knothe at UMAG.  This exhibition, supported by the French May Arts Festival, is dedicated to jewellery design, exceptional masterpieces, and the artistic process of transforming precious metals and stones.  UMAG, in collaboration with L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, presents rarely studied, published or exhibited jewellery drawings that remains largely unknown to the public.

Supported by the Van Cleef & Arpels Patrimony Collection and the Van Cleef & Arpels Jewelry Culture Fund—established in 2019 for research, presentation and educational purposes— along with loans from the Lalique Museum in France and private jewellery collections in Hong Kong, the exhibition showcases a remarkable selection of nearly 100 drawings alongside 13 exquisite jewellery pieces. It illustrates France’s long and influential tradition of jewellery making and highlights individual achievements by tracing the creative journey from initial sketches to gouaché renderings to finished masterpieces.

Speaker

Dr. Florian Knothe is the Director of the University Museum and Art Gallery and an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities, HKU. He serves as the MA in Museum Studies programme director and has taught Museum Studies at undergraduate and post-graduate level for more than 15 years. Florian trained in conservation, art history and heritage law, and lectures and teaches internationally. With the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, he held a Mellon Foundation grant to investigate and initiate Museum Studies at HKU.

Image Credit: French May Arts Festival

 

Sin Sin Fine Art focuses on contemporary art from all over the world that is spiritual and inspiring, cultivating a collection of works by selected international artists.  The Founder, Ms. Sin Sin Man presents artists not based on their market value but on a genuine appreciation of their vision and talent.  She believes that art should be seamlessly integrated into our daily life as we will learn over lunch in her gallery.

About the exhibition:
“2084” features over thirty whimsical artworks across mediums, including woodcut paintings, ink paintings and drawings by local artist, Michelle Fung.

With five imaginary countries, “2084” is the world in fifty-nine years created by Michelle, which she has been developing for the past decade. This exhibition marks an important milestone of Michelle’s ten years of research and hard work; and a focus on her continuing chapter on two fantastical realms: Contradictoria (Polluta) and Northlandia. With thorough research, creativity, and the ability to articulate, each of these countries offers some in-depth and multi-dimensional narrative. Blending irony, imaginary fiction, and complex visual metaphors; “2084” is both a reflective tale and a whimsical re-imagining of the future, challenging our perceptions of reality, environmental crisis, and human agency.

About Michelle Fung:
Hong Kong Canadian interdisciplinary artist Michelle Fung’s lifelong interdisciplinary oeuvre revolves around a grand dystopian world-building narrative in year 2084. In recent years, she has focused on woodcut drawings and paintings of imagined future worlds. Made with detailed carving and layers of rendering, these sculptural paintings on wood feature surreal landscapes, dotted with magical animals, with intricate texture and carved pattern. These imagined worlds offer a glimpse of how our future would look had we continued a path of unfettered consumption.

Photo credit: Sin Sin Fine Art

Please join us for the Fifteenth Annual General Meeting of the University of Hong Kong Museum Society Limited on Tuesday, 3 June 2025, 18:00 at the Biblioteca (Library) on the 23rd Floor of Club Lusitano, Printing House, 16 Ice House Street, Central, Hong Kong.  After the meeting, the Executive Committee is pleased to invite members to join a lecture presented by Professor Marc Walton, Museum Studies Program, The University of Hong Kong.  This lecture will be followed with dinner at Salao Nobre De Camoes (Ballroom) on the 27th Floor of Club Lusitano.

Lecture: Towards a New Future for Art Conservation at The University of Hong Kong

Synopsis:
This lecture will present Art Conservation and Conservation Science as disciplines at the forefront of investigating the materiality of cultural objects across time and space. Case studies will be presented from a variety of different conservation and scientific projects undertaken by the speaker across the world and will culminate in a discussion of the new activities that are now underway at The University of Hong Kong in this area, including the establishment of a MA course, the first of its kind in Hong Kong, as well as plans for laboratories at the University Museum and Art Gallery dedicated to conservation treatments and analyzing art objects.

Guest Speaker:
Marc Walton is a professor in the Museum Studies Program at The University of Hong Kong.  Prior to this, he held senior leadership positions at Hong Kong’s M+ (Head of Conservation and Research) and in academia as co-director of Northwestern University’s Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts where he was also Research Professor of Materials Science.   He has led numerous scientific projects investigating art objects in collaboration with cultural heritage institutions representing a broad range of disciplines (from anthropology to contemporary art) and geographical reach (both U.S. and internationally).   He has also held positions at the Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) after receiving training in art history, conservation and archaeological science at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and the University of Oxford. Professor Walton’s most recent research is on developing and using imaging technologies in the field of conservation science to better understand how artworks were made and deteriorate.

We are delighted to continue our exploration of Chinese classical gardens incorporating elements of artificial hillocks, ornamental rocks, water features, timber structures and meticulously maintained bonsai (penjing) and mature trees.  Mr. Yau Tai Lai, Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Penjing and Artstone Society will guide us on a tour of the Garden of Stone highlighting the designs of bonsai that convey harmony with nature.
        
「石苑」位於上水古洞金錢村金錢南路DD92地段，作為香港盆景雅石學會的會址，是本港盆景雅石文化的勝地。「石苑」依江南園林概念構建，盆栽石景、小橋流水、亭台樓閣等，皆有韻味。全程由香港盆景雅石學會副主席邱泰來先生引領講解。

Photo credit: HK01

HKUMS is delighted to present a guided viewing of Ravishing Blue: Imperial Porcelains and other extraordinary Chinese works of art at Christie’s Asia Pacific headquarters at The Henderson. These exquisite and extremely rare masterpieces spanning close to four centuries feature three of the finest examples of blue-and-white porcelain from three remarkable eras for the category: Yongle (1403-1425), Yongzheng (1723-1735), and Qianlong (1736-1795).

Join us as we immerse in the unparalleled beauty and learn of the historical significance of these masterpieces that epitomise the technical mastery, artistic innovation and imperial patronage that extend over three remarkable eras. 

Speaker

Pola Antebi is Deputy Chairman and International Director of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art at Christie’s Hong Kong. Her areas of expertise include imperial ceramics, jades and works of art from the Yuan to the Qing dynasties. 

Photo courtesy of Christie’s Hong Kong

The HKU Museum Society is delighted to present a guided viewing of 2 Exhibitions at UMAG: “Wondrous River”: Exploring Chinese Landscape Paintings with Dr. Shuo Hua and “8 Times 8”: Stories Series Systems in Mythology & Art with Dr. Harold Kraemer at UMAG

The first exhibition – Wondrous Rivers: Exploring Chinese Landscape Paintings invites visitors to immerse themselves in the captivating world of Chinese landscape paintings from the collection of the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), The University of Hong Kong. As a sequel to the 2024 exhibition Momentous Mountains: The Artistic, Philosophical and Cultural Engagement with Chinese Landscape Painting, this showcase presents a diverse series of paintings spanning from the early Qing dynasty (17th century) to contemporary times. The artists, hailing from different time periods and various regional cultures and training backgrounds, collectively exemplify the multi-faceted evolution of this painting genre.

The collection of Chinese landscape paintings constitutes the foundation of UMAG’s educational and research efforts. Since establishing the collection and making it publicly accessible in the 1950s, UMAG has been closely connected to the development of twentieth-century Chinese painters, actively documenting and studying the evolution of local artistic talents and the Hong Kong art scene. We would like to thank our community of donors—both artists and collectors—for their generosity and for being part of this fascinating journey. Finally, this exhibition would not have been possible without the financial support of the University of Hong Kong Museum Society and HKU’s Endowment for Music and Fine Arts Fund.

Speaker
Dr. Shou Hua received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from the University of Hong Kong. She was a visiting PhD fellow at the Cluster of Global Art History, University of Heidelberg. Her research centres on modern East Asian paintings, art market studies and exhibition history in a cross-cultural context.

The second exhibition – “8 Times 8”: Stories Series Systems in Mythology & Art.

Bats represent good luck, while pine trees symbolise longevity due to their resilience. Many of us can quickly identify the 8 Immortals, yet remembering their individual names and attributes is more challenging. When faced with artworks from ancient times, we often find ourselves astonished by the intricate ornaments, marvellous signs and rich symbolic language. We can sense the deep meaning behind them, yet the stories they tell and the secrets they hold are no longer widely known or taught. 

In both mythology and this exhibition, the number 8 plays a crucial role. The symmetrical shape of the number 8 symbolises an endless cycle, a constant flow of energy, balance, harmony and infinity. While in Cantonese-speaking communities the number 8 stands for wealth, in Christian numerical symbolism it signifies new beginnings and resurrection. And since 8 is a Fibonacci number, it can be found in nature all over the world. In Asian art this can be seen, for example, in the 8 trigrams of the I Ching, the 8 Immortals, the 8 Buddhist symbols or Auspicious objects. These interrelated elements are often depicted as a group of 8 in the form of a serial narrative, which are supplemented by motifs of pairs, figures or scenes from stories, landscapes, plants, flowers, animals, ornaments and symbols. 

Speaker
Dr Harald P. Kraemer taught Art Market courses and wrote for many years about Art Basel and other art fairs for the Vienna-based online magazine Art magazine. As a student, he had his first (painful) experiences as a gallery owner in his hometown and later developed survival strategies for some artists in the art market. He currently teaches Museum Studies at HKU and works as an exhibition curator for UMAG.

Image Credit: Courtesy of UMAG

The HKU Museum Society is delighted to present a private viewing of Cézanne and Renoir Looking at the World – Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée d’Orsay with Professor Greg Thomas at HK Museum of Art.

Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919) asserted themselves as two of the greatest masters of French painting. As icons of the Impressionist art movement in France, the two artists sought to reinvent the art of their time with their innovative depiction of the rapidly changing modern world. Along their artistic journey, they forged a lasting friendship and became influential figures for the new generations of painters, including Spanish master Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973).

This is the first large-scale exhibition of the two Impressionist masters Cézanne and Renoir in Hong Kong, showcasing 52 masterpieces from the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée d’Orsay in France.

Speaker

Professor Greg Thomas earned his Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University in 1995 and has taught at HKU since 1999. A specialist in 19th-century French painting, he has published Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton UP, 2000) and Impressionist Children: Childhood, Family, and Modern Identity in French Art (Yale UP, 2010). Subsequent research has focused primarily on artistic interactions between Europe and China in the 18th and 19th centuries, including a current book project focused on the palace of Yuanmingyuan. At HKU, he teaches an introductory survey of western art history and advanced courses on 18th- and 19th-century art and architecture.

Photo credit to HKMOA

The Executive Committee is pleased to organise a heritage outing and dinner at Kuk Po with Professor Wang Weijen, Director of Center for Chinese Architecture and Urbanism at University of Hong Kong.  Situated amidst the rural landscapes of Hong Kong’s Sha Tau Kok, Kuk Po preserves large area of mangrove wetlands and traditional Hakka settlements, juxtaposed against the backdrop of Shenzhen’s urban skyline across the sea. Supported by the Countryside Conservation Office, the design team from the University of Hong Kong has embarked on an initiative encompassing design research, conservation, and revitalization efforts in Kuk Po.

The design explores alternative urban and rural spaces in Hong Kong, promotes sustainable urban and rural environments, and raises public awareness of traditional architecture and community culture, as well as conservation of the ecological and landscape environments. The project covers: 

Kuk Po Common – Adaptive Reuse of a School Building for Community Spaces.
Kai Choi Plaza – Place Making with Collective Memories.
Art Kuk Po – Space Catalyst and Culture Participation with Creative Intervention using Kai Choi School, Kuk Po Common, and the plaza as venues.
Eco-Toilet – Green Infrastructure with Organic Recycling.
Ruin Garden – Heritage Conservation of the Sung family mansion built during the Qing dynasty with Innovative Method.

Resource Person

Professor Wang Weijen is the Director of Wang Weijen Architecture, Andrew KF Lee Professor of Architecture Design and Director of Center for Chinese Architecture and Urbanism at University of Hong Kong.  Integrating architecture with landscape and urban-rural conditions, his design projects, covering schools, campuses, and community buildings, received design awards including HKIA 2022 Project of the Year, AIA Awards, HKIUD Awards and others.  With research focuses on typology of Chinese Architecture and Cities, his writings and designs have been published in numerous international and regional architectural journals.  He is also the Editorial Director of HKIA Journal, Curator for Hong Kong on 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Curator of 2007 Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

Photo Credit: Kuk Po Vision