The University Archives is one cool place! It houses a century of university documents. When you turn the wheels of the rolling stacks, when you open the box cover, when your fingertips touch a document far older than you, you savour every moment of discovery and imagination. One of the earliest official documents stored in the archives that concerns the teaching of Fine Arts at HKU is the 1965 Senate Minutes. The Senate received a notion from Convocation, “that, in view of the increasing number of young students in Hong Kong going abroad for the study of music and other art [...]

The Department of Fine Arts was established in 1978, but the teaching of art history at HKU did not begin that year. More than two decades earlier, in 1953, Professor Frederick Seguier Drake 林仰山 (1892-1974), as the Head of Chinese Department and the Founder of the Institute of Oriental Studies, added Chinese Art and Archaeology to the regular BA Chinese curriculum. Drake was dedicated in the teaching of Chinese art and the organization of archaeological expeditions. With his missionary and academic training, Drake’s fluency in Chinese was unquestionable; nonetheless, his use of English in the teaching of Chinese art, [...]