OCS HK lecture: Sir Joseph Hotung: Benefactor and Art Collector by Regina Krahl

The K.S. Lo annual lecture is made possible through the generous support of the Lo Kwee Seong Foundation.

Sir Joseph Hotung (1930-2021), grandson of Sir Robert Hotung, was a successful businessman, active in Hong Kong, the US and the UK, but will be remembered foremost as an extremely generous benefactor and an admirable art collector. His patronage, which he himself described as ‘human rights, health, education and the arts’, covered a similarly ample spectrum as his own art collecting. In his London residence, French paintings, English furniture and a wide range of Western works of art were juxtaposed with Chinese hanging scrolls, Buddhist sculptures and hardwood furniture. In spite of these wide-ranging interests, he focused on two areas in particular, where he assembled world-class collections: Chinese jade and early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. The talk will provide something like a guided tour through his former apartment and then concentrate in more detail on his blue-and-white ceramics collection.

Regina Krahl is an independent researcher of Chinese art based in London. A former president of the Oriental Ceramic Society, she worked as Acting Curator of Chinese Ceramics at the British Museum, and as Academic Advisor and Consulting Curator for the Sir Percival David Collection. She has acted as curator and advisor to many museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Asian Art, Berlin; the Musée Cernuschi, Paris; and the National Museum of History, Taipei. She has lectured and published widely on Chinese ceramics and other works of art. Her many publications include Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul (3 vols, 1986, ed. John Ayers); and Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection (4 vols, 1994–2010). She also co-edited Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds (2010).