{"id":191278,"date":"2025-12-14T11:44:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T11:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/191278\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T11:44:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T11:44:30","slug":"vancouver-art-gallery-gifted-131-work-private-collection-from-hong-kong-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/191278\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver Art Gallery gifted 131-work private collection from Hong Kong – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vancouver Art Gallery<\/a> (VAG) has received a landmark donation from an anonymous Hong Kong-based collector of\u00a0131 works by 78 artists, dubbed the Art Continuum Hong Kong (ACHK). The gift represents the largest contribution of Hong Kong art in the gallery\u2019s history. Three decades in the making, the ACHK\u00a0collection chronicles social, political and cultural change spanning the breadth of Hong Kong\u2019s modern and contemporary art history. It comprises painting, sculpture, printmaking, film,\u00a0installation\u00a0and lens-based media by artists from middle of the 20th century until today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Vancouver Art Gallery has been presenting artists and art from China and Japan since its founding in 1931, though these early exhibitions did not yet translate into active collecting,\u201d Diana\u00a0Freundl, the gallery\u2019s senior curator, tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cThe [ACHK] collection is diverse in media and spans artworks from the 1950s to the present. Taken as a whole, it strengthens our ability to present an expanded art history, one shaped by intersecting modernisms such as Quebec Abstraction and the New Ink Movement in Taiwan and Hong Kong and it deepens our engagement with Asian and Asian Diaspora practices within an international framework.\u201d<\/p>\n

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South Ho Siu Nam, The Umbrella Salad XIV, 2014 Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, From the Art Continuum Hong Kong Collection, Image: Courtesy of the Artist and Blindspot Gallery<\/p>\n

The donation speaks to the strong connections between Vancouver and Hong Kong. While it began with a 1980s-era exodus of Hong Kongers seeking real estate refuge in bucolic Vancouver, forever changing it from a sleepy coastal city into an international one, the relationship has expanded into the cultural domain.<\/p>\n

The gift includes works\u00a0by internationally recognised Hong Kong artists\u00a0including\u00a0Luis Chan,\u00a0Irene Chou,\u00a0Tsang Kin Wah,\u00a0Wesley Tongson,\u00a0Sin Wai\u00a0Kin\u00a0and\u00a0Wucius\u00a0Wong,\u00a0as well as works by Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-based artists including\u00a0Howie Tsui\u00a0and\u00a0Lam Tung Pang.<\/p>\n

The VAG will present an exhibition\u00a0of art\u00a0from\u00a0the ACHK donation and its\u00a0permanent collection in\u00a02027 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China.<\/p>\n

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Sin Wai Kin, Irreconcilable Differences, 2020 (video still) Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, From the Art Continuum Hong Kong Collection, Image: Courtesy of the Artist and Blindspot Gallery<\/p>\n

The gift is a significant boon to the VAG\u2019s fledgling Centre for Global Asias<\/a>, launched in November 2024 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the gallery\u2019s Institute of Asian Art. That occasion was marked by a name change and C$1.6m ($1.1m) in donations earmarked for the \u201camplification of Asian Art\u201d at the gallery.<\/p>\n

Sirish Rao, the gallery\u2019s interim co-chief executive and the director of\u00a0its\u00a0Centre for Global Asias, added in a statement: \u201cVancouver is the most Asian city outside of Asia, and speaking of the \u2018local\u2019 in Vancouver implies the global. This collection allows us to better understand and contextualise culture,\u00a0migration\u00a0and exchange, and tell stories that resonate\u00a0intimately\u00a0with both our local and international communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Yeong Tong Lung, Porcelain Dog, 2020 Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, From the Art Continuum Hong Kong Collection, Photo: Courtesy of the Artist and Blindspot Gallery<\/p>\n

The renamed Centre for Global Asias was partly inspired by the author Pico Iyer<\/a>\u2019s notion that \u201ceverywhere is so made up of everywhere else\u201d and \u201chome is not just the place where you happen to be born. It\u2019s the place where you become yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the November 2024 launch event for the Centre for Global Asias, Rao addressed a crowd of pan-Asian patrons, artists and diplomats, saying: \u201cWe recognise the many Asias that exist, within the geography of Asia itself and in the global diaspora.\u201d He added: \u201cThere are Asias yet to be imagined and yet to come. The Centre for Global Asias will be a home for a pluralism of ideas, perspectives and artistic disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

This amplification of the Asian experience into a cosmopolitan, transnational one reflects Vancouver\u2019s roughly half-Asian population\u2014including 28% Chinese, 7 % South Asian, 6% Filipino and 2% Iranian. The gallery\u2019s traditional programming focus and funding base has typically been Chinese but that is expanding with a wider embrace of South and West Asian art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) has received a landmark donation from an anonymous Hong Kong-based collector of\u00a0131 works…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[21256,307,304,305,306,308,93,240,61,60,8541,37169],"class_list":{"0":"post-191278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-acquisitions","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-hong-kong","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-museums-heritage","19":"tag-vancouver-art-gallery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}