Twentieth-Century Chinese Art from the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection

This exhibition and the associated conference, 'Encounters and Reflections: Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China', are sponsored by the University of Hong Kong Museum Society and will mark the beginning of events celebrating the Society's 25th anniversary in 2013.

Professor Michael Sullivan is a pioneer of modern Chinese art history, publishing many important books on the subject including 'Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China, The Arts of China' (now in its 5th edition), 'The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art', and 'Chinese Landscape Painting in the Sui and Tang Dynasties'. Over a sixty-year period, his personal engagement with the art and artists of the twentieth-century make him a unique and unrivalled authority on the art of his generation. During that time, he and his late wife Khoan collected and were given works by some of the most distinctive Chinese artists working in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere.

Professor Sullivan (b.1916) graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1939. He travelled to China in 1940 to work with the International and Chinese Red Cross. There he met his wife, biologist Khoan (Wu Huan). After his return to England in 1946, he studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He went on to study for a Ph.D at Harvard University, which he was awarded in 1952. He taught at the University of Singapore before returning to London in the 1960s to teach at SOAS. From 1966-1984, he was the Christensen Professor of Oriental Art at Stanford University. Following his return to England, he became Fellow Emeritus at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. He will be traveling to Hong Kong for the exhibition opening.

Shown for the first time in Hong Kong, this exhibition will both celebrate Professor Sullivan's contributions to the field of Chinese art history, as well as present selections from the highly personal yet comprehensive collection of modern Chinese art that he and Khoan have built up through knowledge, passion and friendship.

This exhibition is also generously supported by Michelle Art Transport, which is celebrating their 35th anniversary in 2013.