Today, Kwong Lum holds the distinction of being the only living artist to be honored with a museum in his name in China. (The artist’s name, Kwong Lum; and the slightly different form seen in the museum name, Kwong Lam; reflect the provincial and Cantonese spelling variations, respectively.) Lum is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts in traditional and modern Chinese art and antiques and is a researcher and consultant to the Beijing National Museum of China.
Kwong Lum moved to the United States in 1964. Since then, he has spent more than four decades in New York City, working, painting, writing, collecting and studying traditional artwork, and carrying out cultural activities to popularize China’s traditional legacy in the West.
Lum’s formal training as an artist began at the age of 9 in Hong Kong. He also began collecting ancient Chinese artwork under the guidance of his art teacher, Ding Yanyong.
Since the early 1970s, Lum has immensely enlarged the volume of his original Sai Yang Tang collection by adding in ancient masters’ painting and calligraphy, bronzes, sculpture and porcelain ware of different dynasties, purchased throughout the world at auctions or from private collectors. His Sai Yang Tang Collection, boasting of its invaluable art treasures of ancient China, enjoys a far-reaching reputation of “a smaller-sized overseas Palace Museum.”
For the past 60 years, Kwong Lum has set a goal of collecting traditional Chinese arts and cultures, and promoting them further, in a hope to bring back many national treasures back home
At a chance visit from the mayor of Jiangmen to Lum’s Soho loft, a blueprint was drawn for a museum to be built to house these treasures.
In 2009 the Kwong Lam Museum of Art, a government-funded museum laid its foundation on the north edge of Xinhui district, in the Botanical Garden, city of Jiangmen, Guangdong in southern China. Over 700 Chinese antiques and art treasures, which were collected by Lum that were kept oversea for a few decades, had now been donated and returned to China and found their home in the museum where these precious ancient art treasures will be permanently displayed.
The facility has been designed as a cultural exhibition center with more than 5,500 square meters and built with an atrium and four stories, to be used for multiple functions of art and heritage exhibition and education. The second, third and four floors house Lum’s collection and his own works of calligraphy and painting. On the ground floor is an art gallery for regional artists with rotating exhibitions. Admission is free.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
