About Us

The Forum for Curators of Chinese Art (the ‘Forum’) brings together Chinese art curators, museum professionals, and art historians in the global network of Bei Shan Tang Foundation (the ‘Foundation’) with the goal of facilitating knowledge exchange and catalysing museum collaborations. Previous Forums were organised in collaboration with museums including the Art Museum, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2009), the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, 2011), the Shanghai Museum (Shanghai, 2013), The British Museum (London, 2014), The Palace Museum (Beijing, 2016), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, 2018), as well as the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Hong Kong Palace Museum (Hong Kong, 2023). An online Forum was hosted by the Foundation in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Bei Shan Tang Foundation was founded in 1985 by Dr. J. S. Lee to institutionalise his efforts to promote Chinese art and culture, with a tax-exempt charitable (Section 88) status. Along with its original mission to promote Chinese art and culture, the Foundation now also dedicates a significant part of its resources to support educational initiatives.

Vision and Mission in Chinese Art and Culture

• Vision – To enhance everyone’s understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture
• Mission – To advance scholarship in the field of Chinese art and culture

Strategic Priorities in Chinese Art and Culture

• To encourage the scholarly research and preservation of traditional Chinese art in both academic and museum sectors
• To support capacity building of Chinese art historians and museum professionals for Hong Kong and beyond
• To further scholarly research of Chinese art by leveraging Bei Shan Tang’s collection

Recent Major Initiatives in Chinese Art and Culture

• J. S. Lee Memorial Fellowship Programme, which supports outstanding and promising museum professionals and scholars in the field of Chinese art and culture to conduct research or gain curatorial and museum experience through fellowship attachments at foreign museums and academic institutions for a period of 4 to 12 months
• Bei Shan Tang Doctoral Thesis Grant, which supports final-year PhD candidates to engage in full-time thesis writing
• Museum Professionals Training Workshop organised by the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and sponsored by the Foundation
• Grants to museums, universities, and other professional associations and institutions for projects that advance knowledge generation, transfer, and/or dissemination in the field of Chinese art and culture, including research, publications, conferences, exhibitions, and other initiatives grounded in rigorous scholarship
• Grants for postgraduate programmes and postdoctoral research in Chinese art and history for individuals with demonstrated scholarly excellence and financial need