"Bonhams Auction 2016" With Victoria Huang
Bonhams Hong Kong will present a tightly-curated sale of Fine Chinese and Southeast Asian Paintings on 29 May 2016. Chinese masterpieces include works by Zhang Daqian 張大千, Lu Yanshao 陸儼少, Li Keran 李可染, Liu Haisu 劉海粟 and Huang Jun 黃均. Southeast Asian highlights encompass paintings by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès勒邁耶 and Bui Xuan Phai 裴春派.
Notably, Bonhams will feature a rare artistic collaboration between Nelson Mandela 納爾遜 · 曼德拉 and Tan Swie Hian 陳瑞獻. Six powerful images of the hands and arms of Nelson Mandela sketched by the great politician himself – which were then lithographed and painted upon by acclaimed Singaporean artist Tan Swie Hian – will be sold as a set with a customised box and framed as a cohesive series. This set of six collectively known as The Nelson Mandela Unity Series, signed individually by both, is unique in medium, meaning and technique — original acrylic, ink and pencil over monochrome lithography. Tan reinforced Mandela's nobility of the human spirit by using Buddhist mudras (symbolic hand gestures) and Chinese calligraphy in the cursive script. This exceptional series was formerly in the collection of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, thereafter by direct descent to his eldest daughter Pumla Makaziwe Mandela.
Resource Person
Victoria Huang is currently based at the Bonhams Singapore office. She is responsible for the Asian painting portfolio as she develops her client base in Singapore and the region. Victoria has a BA degree in Asian Studies from Scripps College, California. In 1997, she received her MA in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University, New York, where she specialised in Chinese paintings of the Ming and Qing dynasties. To increase her strategic understanding of art museum and gallery management, she completed her second MA degree at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, in 2010, where she received distinction for her thesis on branding university museums.
In between her degrees, she worked in education and the arts. Victoria was an assistant curator at the Singapore Art Museum from 2005 to 2007, where she oversaw the development of artefact donations, prepared catalogue production and curated or jointly-curated exhibitions on Singapore and Southeast Asian art including Encounters: Southeast Asian Art in Singapore Art Museum Collection, Legends: Soo Bin's Portraits of Chinese Ink Masters and W.S. Hoong's Art of Seal-Carving: A Kong Chow Wui Koon Donation Exhibition. In 2012, she was selected by Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB) and Bonhams to undergo specialist training in sourcing, authentication, valuation and cataloguing of classical and 20th Century Chinese paintings as well as Southeast Asian art under the 2-year Strategic Attachment and Training Programme funded by EDB.