Highlights
Sir Joseph Hotung (1930–2021)
The ancients saw jade as embodying all the virtues of a perfect gentleman, the junzi. As many people noted, Sir Joseph—the philanthropist, collector (particularly of Chinese jade), and businessman—was a gentleman in the true sense of the word and a model of civic-minded humanitarianism. He was also someone of whom it truly could be said that he left the world a better place for having lived in it. However, his name is not generally well known on the world stage because of his innate modesty and desire to maintain a low profile.
Sir Joseph, the grandson of Sir Robert Hotung, was born in Shanghai in 1930 and was educated in China, first in Shanghai and then at St Louis College, in Tianjin (1948–49). He spent many of the war years in Shanghai, and for Sir Joseph, as for many others there, this period was one of deprivation and uncertainty. But he regarded those years as character building; he said his resilience and determination were nurtured during that time. He subsequently spent a year at university in Hong Kong but then decided to go to the United States to take a degree in economics at Catholic University in Washington, DC, where he graduated cum laude.
An Interview with Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang
In what is the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s largest capital gift ever, Oscar L. Tang and his wife Agnes Hsu-Tang have pledged $125 million for the renovation of the museum’s Modern Wing, which encompasses 80,000 square feet (7,400 square metres) of galleries and public space. The redesigned wing—to be named in honour of the couple—is not only an update of the physical space but is a ‘re-envisioning’ of the Met’s display of modern and contemporary art to incorporate a more interdisciplinary, encyclopaedic, and global approach. Mr Tang is a trustee emeritus and generous decades-long benefactor of the Met, as well as chair of the museum’s Asian Art Visiting Committee. Agnes Hsu-Tang is a respected academic and international cultural heritage policy adviser and a member of the Met’s Modern and Contemporary Art Visiting Committee.
An Interview with Robert and Lisa Kessler
Robert and Lisa Kessler are patrons of the Denver Art Museum. Although they collect across categories, they are perhaps most well-known for their collection of contemporary Japanese ceramics which they exhibited in, ‘From the Fire Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Robert and Lisa Kessler Collection’, from 25 September 2016 to 19 November 2017 at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition featured 65 pieces created by 35 Japanese artists and included pieces made by both master ceramists, designated as Living National Treasures in Japan, as well as by emerging artists. At home, they have built a Japanese and Chinese scroll collection room along with a Japanese garden to house their collection. We speak to them about their collecting journey.