A Teaching Museum

UMAG – the University Museum and Art Gallery – is developing its role as a teaching museum and meeting point for HKU and the community.

Rising Above – a major exhibition of African American art and history – was staged outside the US for the first time at the University’s own museum early this year. Not only was it a prestigious coup for UMAG involving international partners, it was also an opportunity to advance UMAG’s mission of being a teaching museum.

The exhibition, which showcased the collection of Americans Bernard and Shirley Pooler Kinsey, was managed jointly by UMAG and the American Studies programme and included regular classes held in the museum, public lectures, internships for students, and rich learning experiences for both students and the public. The students translated materials, promoted the exhibition through social media, and gave tours to the public.

“We have done individual events like this before but never a semester-long run,” UMAG Director Dr Florian Knothe said. “It’s a wonderful model that I hope we can follow in future with different departments.”

The museum has previously organised smaller-scale collaborations with the European Studies and Japanese Studies programmes and has ongoing training programmes with the Fine Arts and Architecture departments. Dr Knothe believes there is scope to involve even more disciplines and he has recently proposed a Common Core course with the Department of Physics that brings together the study of materials and art. He also lectures for the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, is in talks with the Faculty of Education on internships and has started sending out feelers to the Faculty of Law.

“We are trying to build more of these connections with departments and develop projects that can offer insights into topics that students would otherwise only know from a book or a PowerPoint presentation,” he said.

That vision of being a teaching resource is shared by other university museums and in October, 2016, HKU hosted the third Research Symposium on University Museums of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, with the theme of museum teaching beyond traditional faculty courses and classroom settings.

We are trying to build more of these connections with departments and develop projects that can offer insights into topics
that students would otherwise only
know from a book or a PowerPoint presentation.

Dr Florian Knothe

External partners

Knowledge exchange comes in, too, because joint programmes such as Rising Above can be delivered to the public through the museum, which offers guided tours, tailored tours for school groups and for those with disabilities, and workshops for professionals.

External partners are also part of the mix. M+ Museum and AXA Art Insurance have helped to fund conservation workshops and the Getty Conservation Institute, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UMAG in 2016, is collaborating on the creation of a database of tangible and intangible heritage in Asia. A grant from the Knowledge Exchange Fund is helping to support this initiative and develop UMAG as a resource and server platform to help other groups in Asia develop their own local heritage databases.

In addition, UMAG and the Faculty of Arts recently were awarded HK$1.1 million by The Andrew W Mellon Foundation to expand museum and conservation studies and develop new courses in preservation.

“It’s great to work with external partners but it’s equally important for us to connect with different departments and faculties here at HKU,” Dr Knothe said. “We want to become an effective teaching museum and I think we owe that to the University. It’s also a chance to distinguish ourselves from other museums in Hong Kong.” 

The Kinsey African American Art and History collection, exhibited as Rising Above, was seen by more than five million people in 21 US cities before coming to HKU. Its 120-plus objects, including art, documents, artefacts and first editions, offer a material record of the experiences and achievements of African Americans since 1595. The objects range from the shackles used when transporting slaves to a 1773 book by the first African American poet, paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries, and a first edition of 12 Years a Slave. As Dr Knothe explained, “Rising Above is about a community struggling with expectations in a way. There is all this positive aspect of their history that has been somewhat overlooked.”

Exhibitions to admire and learn from

The American Studies programme is a partner in the project and has brought in visiting scholars from the US as well as its own academics to lecture in the museum about the history around particular objects. The lectures will result in a book, as well as a catalogue of the exhibition.

UMAG also collaborated with the European Studies programme on a smaller scale for an exhibition on the Holocaust in 2014 and is currently planning an exhibition later this year with the School of Chinese. “We do exhibitions of Chinese art all the time, but this exhibition is related to anthropology and history. We will work with other experts on campus and with students because it’s something we couldn’t do alone,” Dr Knothe said.

A guided tour led by HKU students introducing the Kinsey African American Art and History collection.

The Association of Pacific Rim Universities’ third Research Symposium on University Museums was hosted by the University Museum and Art Gallery at HKU, with the theme centred on museum teaching beyond traditional faculty courses and classroom settings.

From left: Mr Bernard W Kinsey, Mrs Shirley Pooler Kinsey and Mr Khalil Kinsey, United States Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau Mr Kurt W Tong, HKU Dean of the Faculty of Arts Professor Derek Collins, HKU Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global) Professor John Kao and UMAG Director Dr Florian Knothe officiating at the opening ceremony of the Rising Above exhibition.

Woman Wearing Orange Scarf, circa 1940,
Laura Wheeler Waring, oil on canvas.