SEP/OCT 2019

VOLUME 50 - NUMBER 5

This issue celebrates the reopening of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, closed since 2015 for a major renovation and expansion project. The revamped museum will boast additional exhibition space and five extra galleries, with designated spaces for large-scale contemporary works. It will also make the most of its waterfront location, with a new glass facade and cladding that echoes the waves of the adjacent harbour. Home to over 17,000 artworks in four main categories—20th and 21st century Chinese painting and calligraphy, Chinese antiquities, China trade art, and modern and Hong Kong art—the new museum will place renewed emphasis on its Hong Kong art collection with a dedicated gallery. Eve Tam introduces the museum’s history and reopening while Maria Mok, Raymond Tang and Sunny Tang discuss some of the celebratory exhibitions and important recent donations.

Also unveiling new galleries this autumn is the Brooklyn Museum. Its new Arts of China galleries will showcase both historical works and new acquisitions of contemporary art, some works specially commissioned for the museum to dialogue with its ancient artefacts. Assistant curator Susan L. Beningson presents highlights. Meanwhile, project curator Wenyuan Xin shares some of the scholar’s objects from The Sir Victor Sassoon Chinese Ivories Collection, acquired by The British Museum last year.

We continue with two articles on Chinese embroidery. Lecturer Rachel Silberstein explains how the late Ming embroidery pattern book A Collection of Snipped Rosy Clouds expressed women’s artistic erudition, and assistant curator Luwen Hu looks at the artistic influences on the National Palace Museum’s Yuan dynasty gauze embroidery Nine Goats Heralding the New Year.

Finally, Gerald Kozicz introduces the Gaurishankar shrine of Jagatsukh in India’s Kullu valley, one of the oldest intact architectural structures in the area.

FEATURES
Eve Tam. The Hong Kong Museum of Art: A Mirror of Hong Kong as a City of Contrasts
Tang Hing-sun, Sunny. Treasures Ancient and Modern: Two Donation Exhibitions at the Hong Kong Museum of Art
Wenyuan Xin. Excellence and Elegance: Scholar's Objects from the Sir Victor Sassoon Ivories Collection
Rachel Silberstein. Women In Asian Art - A Collection of Snipped Rosy Clouds: Embroidery Patterns and Late Ming Lyrical Pictures
Luwen Hu. From Grassland to Garden - On the Embroidery Nine Goats Heralding the New Year
Gerald Kozics. Embedded in Living Tradition: The Gaurishankar Shrine of Jagatsukh
PREVIEWS & REVIEWS
Maria Kar-wing Mok. 'Ordinary to Extraordinary': The Hong Kong Museum of Art and its Untold Stories
Raymond Tang. 'Classics Remix - The Hong Kong Viewpoint'
Susan L. Beningson. Contemporary Works in the New Arts of China Galleries at the Brooklyn Museum
Helmut F. Neumann. Alchi: Tresure of the Himalayas
NEWS
Anthony Wu. Chinese Works of Art and Paintings Auction Highlights- Spring 2019
COMMENTARY
Steven Gallagher. Shipwrecks, Treasure Hunters, Chinese Porcelain and the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage
CURATOR’S CHOICE
Richard A. Pegg. Linkages: Mi Fu's Poem Written in a Boat on the Wu River