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The Executive Committee is pleased to organise an evening lecture dinner with Catherine Maudsley, a leading independent fine art professional and one of the Society’s earliest Exco members.

 

Lecture synopsis:

Collecting is a vital and engaging art form, full of creative energy.  At its best, it is informed and guided by passion, principles, and best practices.   In this talk, Catherine will introduce The Art Gallery of Ontario’s African art collection, built over several decades by Dr. Murray Frum whose vision and passion created one of the world’s most significant private collections of African art.  The Frum Collection is an excellent example of passion and principles.   To highlight important collecting practices, Catherine will also consider The Studio of Gentleness and Ardour private collection of dye-resist textiles, examining the questions about what to acquire, why to acquire, and social impact responsibilities. 

 

Speaker:

Catherine Maudsley is a trusted senior advisor and curator to private, museum-caliber private collections in Hong Kong and globally.  An art historian, art advisor, curator, writer, and educator, she has lived in Hong Kong for four decades. She is the recipient of over 20 awards for academic excellence, Catherine was a Connaught Research Scholar at the University of Toronto (School of Graduate Studies); a Canada-China Scholar in Beijing (Central Academy of Fine Arts); a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Hong Kong (Department of Fine Arts) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grantee (Hôbôgirin Institute, Kyoto).

Her recent curatorial practice includes: “Intimate Encounters: Handscrolls and Albums from the M K Lau Collection”; “Wesley Tongson: The Journey”; and “Rendering Change: The Art of New China”.

Art collector Murray Frum (1931-2013)
Photographer: Jeff Coulson
Image source: copyright The Globe and Mail

The HKU Museum Society is delighted to organise a visit to Sin Sin Fine Art, a gallery that focuses on contemporary art from all over the world that is spiritual and inspiring.  We will be welcomed by Sin Sin Man, founder, owner and director of “Sin Sin Atelier – Fine Art – Villa” who will personally guide us through their current exhibition Roots.  A creative free-spirit, she will share insights of the works of two contemporary artists Lee Man Sang and Wensen Qi. 

Following the tour of the exhibition, a small group of 11 members will enjoy a refreshing lunch with Sin Sin in her gallery.  As space is limited, please sign up early.

 

Roots

This is a duet exhibition featuring the works from Hong Kong artist, Lee Man Sang and Chongqing-based French artist, Wensen Qi (Vincent Cazeneuve). An inner dialogue with roots, values & identity.

Both artists’ surreal displacements in the dynamic cities symbolise the sense of magical realism, their artworks become part of the fabric of normalcy, interspersed throughout everyday real life. The artists challenge the definition of ‘roots’. Roots are not born of nature but made and crafted by the human mind. They are shaped by the values, principles and core spirituality that make us who we are.

The HKU Museum Society is pleased to organize a guided tour to visit the exhibition The Atlas of Maritime Buddhism with Dr. Isabelle Frank, Director of the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery at City University of Hong Kong.

 

The Atlas of Maritime Buddhism is a cutting-edge exhibition that traces the religion’s development along the Maritime route from India across Asia, providing a dazzling visual immersion into major historic Buddhist sites. The integration of virtual scenography, 3D stereoscopic visualizations, and physical sculptures, generously loaned from Hong Kong collections, defines the new approach to museology presented by the Atlas of Maritime Buddhism. It gives visitors an intense visual and auditory experience of Buddhism in its richly varied forms, as it was developed throughout Southeast Asia, and in China and Japan. The Atlas of Maritime Buddhism is a crucial reminder of the continued importance of the Silk Road, which stimulated economic, social, and cultural development across Asia, today revived in the Belt and Road initiative.

 

Professor Jeffrey Shaw, Chair Professor of Media Art at CityU, and Professor Sarah Kenderdine, Professor of Digital Museology at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, are responsible for the original concept of the exhibition, and were assisted by a team of scholars in realizing this ambitious project, initially, at the Fo Guang Shan Museum of Buddhism in Taiwan and, now at City University of Hong Kong.

 

Speaker

Dr. Isabelle Frank focuses on curating exhibitions that combine technology and the arts and bridge Western and Asian cultures.  An art historian by training with a PhD from Harvard University, she first taught at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts and was then Associate Dean for Academic Affair at The New School, and Dean at Fordham University’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies.  She has published on Italian Renaissance art and decorative art as well as edited many exhibition catalogues for the City University Exhibition Gallery, including Cabinets of curiosities, Art Deco. The France-China Connection, and most recently Leonardo da Vinci: Art & Science, Then & Now.

 

The HKU Museum Society is pleased to support the HKU Fine Arts and Art History Alumni Association and Department of Art History, The University of Hong Kong in their presentation of this lecture with Dr. Kathleen Wyma.

For registration please click: http://hkufaaa.hk/educational/#biennales

 

Synopsis
Over the last 15 years many cities from Beijing to Colombo, Singapore to Sharjah have jumped on the biennale bandwagon. The Venice Biennale may have set a historical precedent for spectacular art events but what does the more recent proliferation of biennales tell us? Are biennales a new fashionable art trend or a sign of increased awareness of global art practice? Through a consideration of various locations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, this talk will touch upon some of the key historical and contemporary examples of biennales and how they have impacted the global circuits of art from 1980 to the present. 

For more event details, please visit:
http://hkufaaa.hk/educational/#biennales

 

Speaker
Dr. Kathleen Wyma is visiting assistant professor at the Department of Art History, The University of Hong Kong. She teaches courses on contemporary global, modern and South Asian art history, among which is FINE2090: Blockbusters, bonanzas, and biennales: contemporary art in the global age. Her research focuses on post 1945 Indian art, with a special interest in post colonialism and the impact of intercultural exchange in an increasing globalized art world.

 

The HKU Museum Society is pleased to present two guided viewings at the H Queen’s.  The first exhibition Park Seungmo Solo Exhibition will be guided by Vivian Har, the executive director of Tang Contemporary’s. The second exhibition A Double Listen – A sound-based exhibition and site-specific performance will be guided by Louis Siu follow with an optional lunch.

 

Park Seungmo Solo Exhibition
Tang Contemporary started a new solo exhibition for a Korean artist, Park Seungmo. This exhibition features Park’s representative wire figurative sculptures from his famous Maya (Illusion) series, collected from New York, Berlin, and Seoul. His picturesque sculptures lead the audience to the momentary experience of the boundaries between reality and memory, truth and perception, and consciousness and longing.

Park’s works have always taken a prominent position in the art field and under the media spotlight, being featured in the Korean movie Parasite which was awarded for the 92nd Academy Awards of The Oscar. His works have also been displayed in more than 40 exhibitions worldwide, such as “Arena” at Taipei Fine Art Museum in 2017 and “Korean Eye” at Museum of Arts and Design in New York, USA 2011. Many museums, galleries, major enterprises and public figures have collected Park’s works as well.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit:
https://www.tangcontemporary.com/2021-park-seungmo-hk

 

 

A Double Listen – A sound-based exhibition and site-specific performance
This exhibition is Toolbox Percussion’s venture into interdisciplinary practices, featuring sound artist and composer Alain Chiu’s new sound art installation where different objects and sounds are fragmentedly laid out in a finite space, leading audience to construct a sound afterimage, and unique listening experience. It encapsulates the work in the form of multimedia conflation of percussive sound and visualised installation, multi-channel audio work, and newly commissioned sound sequences.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit:
https://www.toolboxpercussion.org/adoublelisten

The HKU Museum Society is pleased to tour The Bei Shan Tang Legacy: Chinese Painting under the guidance of the exhibition’s curator, Dr. Phil Chan.  Responding to requests from academia and the public, the Art Museum of CUHK is rerunning this exhibition to showcase the artistic achievements in painting from the Southern Song to the Qing dynasties.

The 120 exhibits are presented in ten sections, namely Landscapes of the Mind, Landscapes from Nature, Landscapes after the Past, Birds-and-Flowers and Miscellaneous Subjects, Daoist and Buddhist Realms, Portraits beyond Appearances, Fair Ladies, Yangzhou Painting, Guangdong Painting, and Women Painters, in the hope of offering visitors a road map for sampling the intriguingly complex and enduringly captivating domains of Chinese painting.  Strolling through the exhibition galleries, visitors may feel like travelling back in time and discovering different facets of the past.

 

Resource Person

Dr. Phil Chan received his Ph.D. from the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is currently the Associate Curator (Painting and Calligraphy) in the Art Museum, CUHK, having a research interest in Ming, Qing and Modern Chinese calligraphy and painting, including the relation between Chinese poem and painting, and the history of connoisseurship and collections. His recent research focuses on the Lanting artifacts and works of Dong Qichang in the collection of the Art Museum, CUHK. He has curated several exhibitions, and edited/co-edited several catalogues, the most recent one is “Sincere Brush: Works of Ting Yin-yung Courtesy of His Students and Friends in the Department of Fine Arts, CUHK”. He was awarded the J.S. Lee Memorial Fellow (2018-19), working at the Princeton University Art Museum to study the colophons and inscriptions on the collection of Song and Yuan painting and calligraphy, as well as Ming and Qing letters.

 

The Executive Committee is pleased to organise a guided tour of two exhibitions at the K11 MUSEA.  We will begin with a morning tour of The Art of Gold, 3000 Years of Chinese Treasures, follow with optional lunch nearby before an afternoon tour of Calligraphy Rhapsody – Retrospective Exhibition of Georges Mathieu guided by the exhibition’s curator Catherine Kwai. 

(1) The Art of Gold, 3000 Years of Chinese Treasures

L’ECOLE Asia Pacific is featuring masterpieces from the Mengdiexuan Collection, showcasing 3000 years of Chinese gold craftsmanship.  Curated with support from Professor Xu Xiaodong, Associate Director of the Art Museum, CUHK and Dr. Tony Yu, Sam, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Art Museum, CUHK, the exhibition illustrates four major techniques of hammering and chasing, casting, granulation, wire and filigree.  From necklaces, bracelets and earrings to hairpins, brooches and belt plaques, the exhibits span three millennia from Shang dynasty to Qing dynasty, presenting goldsmithing techniques that still intrique connoisseur’s eyes in the modern days.

 

(2) Calligraphy Rhapsody – Retrospective Exhibition of Georges Mathieu

Co-organised by K11 Art Foundation (KAF) and the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong & Macau, with support from Comité Georges Mathieu, Calligraphy Rhapsody – Retrospective Exhibition of Georges Mathieu showcases 14 select paintings traversing four decades of the artist’s oeuvre on loan from important private collections. Curated by Catherine Kwai, Director of Kwai Fung Foundation. Georges Mathieu (1921—2012), a painter, a philosopher, and pivotal instigator of Lyrical Abstraction, turned against Geometric Abstraction and began the Art Informel movement in post-war Paris. He pioneered performance art, Happenings that compress energy and speed into the unleashed creative act.

Speaker
Ms Catherine Kwai is the Founder and Managing Director of Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery. She established Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery in 1991, motivated by a passion for art and her wish to bridge the cultural exchange between China and the West. Kwai Fung Hin reflects the strength and knowledge for the 20th century art in China and Europe. In the past 30 years, Kwai Fung Hin has organized over 100 exhibitions at the gallery and has collaborated and curated exhibitions with renowned museums and institutes. Kwai Fung Hin has collaborated with international publishing house Rizzoli to publish artists’ monograph. In 2011, Ms Catherine Kwai was made “Knight of the National Order of the Merit” for her contribution to the arts.

Please note that the AGM will now start at 18:00, instead of 18:10.  This will ensure that the lecture can start promptly at 18:30.

The Executive Committee invites members to join the eleventh Annual General Meeting and Lecture to be held on Thursday, 3 June 2021 (18:00 – meeting, 18:30 – lecture).  Due to government’s restrictions on social gatherings, the meeting and lecture will be held via Zoom.  To join, please RSVP to Alice Ko at [email protected] before 2 June 2021 (12:00 noon).

We are honoured to present Professor Derek Collins, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at HKU, as the special guest speaker for this year’s AGM Lecture.  

 

The New Art Revolution
The art world has been thrown headlong into a new digital age in recent months. The digital blockchain infrastructure has created new opportunities around art ownership, art engagement, and rewritten the rules for how artists engage their fans and sell their work. Some of these changes will have a permanent impact on the art ecosystem. This talk will investigate some of the key features of this new digital environment, including a look at some cutting-edge digital art, and explore their implications for traditional university and public museums.

 

Speaker
Professor Derek Collins is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The University of Hong Kong.  He serves as a member of the Consultation Panel of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and as Senior Advisor to the Chairman of Philips Auctions, Hong Kong.  Originally specialized in the ancient Greco-Roman world, he has published work on literature, history, art, and religion.  He has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships, most recently by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York to expand museum and conservation science at The University of Hong Kong.  Over the years at HKU, he has also created a joint programme with Christie’s Education, interviewed leading art world professionals, published and hosted programming about art and business in Hong Kong.

Christie’s is delighted to invite the members of the University of Hong Kong Museum Society to a private guided tour of 20^th and 21^st Century Art Auctions.

 

The guided tour will feature this season’s Evening Sale top lots led by an important 1982 masterpiece, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Untitled (One Eyed Man or Xerox Face)”, which was featured at the artist’s retrospective in Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Other special highlights include “Potted Chrysanthemums” by Sanyu, Pablo Picasso’s “Nu couche a la libellule”, and prominent works by international artists such as Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun, Banksy, Avery Singer, Adrian Ghenie, Yoshitomo Nara and Matthew Wong.

 

HKU Museum Society guests will also view “Slave and Lion”, a magnificent national treasure of museum quality, by Chinese Modern master Xu Beihong (1895-1953). As one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, he paved the way for Chinese Realism and pioneered modern art education in China. This tremendous work will be featured in a single lot auction and carries an estimate of HK$350,000,000 – 450,000,000/ US$45,000,000 – 58,000,000, the highest estimated Asian artwork ever offered at auction.

SANYU (CHANG YU, 1895-1966)
Potted Chrysanthemums
oil on masonite
91.5 x 48 cm. (36 x 18 7/8 in.)
Painted circa 1950s
HK$78,000,000-120,000,000
US$11,000,000-16,000,000

 

The HKU Museum Society is pleased to visit the showcase Space Shuffler – Imagining Creative Communities with Dorcas Leung, Assistant Manager of HART. This tour will mainly be moderated in Cantonese with some English translations.

 

About Space Shuffler – Imagining Creative Communities

This presentation reflects upon the question around the nature of art spaces and their functions: how does each of us regard art spaces and cultural groups to play a role (or not) as a part of our lives?

Space Shuffler combines an audience-led reflective journey on art spaces and their inextricable relationship with the creative communities they house, as well as a showcase of latest works created and presented by Hausians (artists) of HART Social Studio. The latest commissioned work of our Open Call winner will also be shown for the first time in this presentation, enriching the narrative via creativity itself.

For more information about the presentation, please visit: https://thehart.com.hk/spaceshuffler

 

About Artists

Chui Pui-chee apprenticed under Mr. Jat See-yeu and Professor Wang Dong-ling. After obtaining his first degree in Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Chui furthered his postgraduate studies at the Department of Chinese Calligraphy, China Academy of Art, where he obtained his Master of Arts and Doctoral Degrees. Chui’s artworks are collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology of University of Oxford, and are popular among private collectors.

Doris Ng is an artist residing in Hong Kong. Her artwork is coded with rich color, symbols and texts. She relates the surrounding contexts with her life episodes. Through collaging, she attempts to story tell the overwhelming information. She works in an intense manner- with constant motions to assemble, layer, erase and overlap. This is how her hands weave and unfold the tangled comprehension of unique interrelationships. Her recently exhibited works are 999000110112 and The ubiquitous gates.

 

About HART

HART is a not-for-profit arts organisation with a mission to foster collaboration and community value through a sustainable culture of creativity. A collective of art spaces and art programming, HART is dedicated to the facilitation of cultural dialogue, collaboration and new possibilities for art creation, and to that end supports and enables Hong Kong’s creative community through diverse and extensive exhibition, event, workshop, artist atelier and salon programming. HART is committed to nurturing local talent and acting as a platform for innovation, inspiration and cross-pollination among the creative sectors. As a key player in establishing a robust art ecosystem in Hong Kong and ensuring the next generation of artists and art lovers are supported and championed, HART’s programming extends to community-based arts education and outreach for the under-resourced groups in Hong Kong.