An exhibition of more than 100 ritual bronzes from China's Great Bronze Age are on view now through March 14th at the Art Gallery at Gianguan Auctions New York  The collection is on loan from the Sai Yang Tang Collection of Kwong Lum. 

Mr. Lum is a businessman, scholar and artist. Mr. Lum started collecting Chinese art as a nine-year-old in Hong Kong under the guidance of his art teacher, Ding Yanyong, who taught him Chinese painting, calligraphy and most of all, the appraisal and collection of Chinese antiques. Thus began his Sai Yang Tang Collection.

As a renowned collector, Mr Lum has immensely enlarged the volume of his 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. Today, his Sai Yang Tang Collection in the United States, boasting of its invaluable art treasures of ancient China, enjoys a far-reaching reputation of “A Smaller-Sized Overseas Palace Museum.” 

In 1999, a Kwong Lum National Art Treasure Exhibition was held by Asian Cultural Center in New York, commemorating the 50th Anniversary on the formation of Sai Yang Tang Collection.

China’s CCTV "National Treasure Archives" program has made a special trip to New York to interview Lum and they documented four television episodes in the CCTV broadcast.

In 2012, Guangdong Government built a museum named “Kwong Lum Art Museum” at Jiangmen City. The museum opened in 2014 and houses Mr. Lum’s paintings as well as treasures of the Sai Yang Tang Collection. 

Mr. Lum will be launching his On-Line Museum and hold series of exhibitions of his collection. The first is Ritual  Bronzes, currently on view. The object date to the Qijia Culture at the end of the third millennium B.C., and Erlitou period up to Han Dynasty. Among the highlights are rare and prestigious bronze objects of technical excellence, signifying political power, devout spiritual beliefs, and exalted social status.

Among the objects on view are:

- a Late Shang, bronze ritual wine vessel, with human face and cover

- a massive early Western Zhou bronze food vessel, inscribed Li, complete with cover and  decorated with high-relief geometric shape and masks, 

- From the Qin Dynasty, a graduated set of seven bianzhong bells, suspended on similarly cast frame,

- A Warring States gilt bronze, silver inlay 2-wheel carriage with umbrella shade drawn by four-hourses, each cast as a complete piece. 

- Of the Shang, a wine vessel (zun) with four rams heads, 

- Dating to the Late Shang Dynasty, a bronze fang ding with human face masks,

- From the Eastern Han Dynasty, a 6-foot tall bronze reider on horsebaack with spear.

The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, March 14th. It concludes with a lecture on the objects hosted by the China Institute. The discussion takes place among the ritual bronze at the Art Gallery of Gianguan Auctions, 295 Madison Avenue, beginning at 2 p.m. Admission to the exhbition and lecture is free.

For details, please visit www.gianguanauctions.com