When The Chinese University of Hong Kong was founded in 1963, Chinese studies became the flagship program of the university. As China’s artistic legacy and material culture were central to understanding Chinese civilization, the university’s first Vice-Chancellor Prof. Choh-ming Li had the vision to build a university museum that would provide a platform for learning from cultural relics. Towards that end, the late philanthropist Dr. J.S. Lee of Bei Shan Tang provided critical guidance and support, and the duo recruited the Oxford-educated James Watt, who, at the time, was serving as a curator at the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery (later Hong Kong Museum of Art), to direct the museum. Designed by I.M. Pei at the behest of Dr. Lee, the centrally located museum opened in fall 1971 in the heart of the main campus, next to the university administrative building and university library. To this date, it is rare to find a museum that occupies a comparably central position in a university. The location of the Art Museum (then known as the Art Gallery) speaks volume of its value to the founding members of the university and their expectation of the museum.

The newly built museum with a storage facility paved the way for developing the collection. With limited resources, the museum’s original strategy was to acquire two types of objects: 1) specimens including shards and fragments for teaching and 2) objects that had special value for research purposes. A category of objects that attracted the attention of scholars for centuries but which remained affordable was rubbings. The rubbing Huashan Temple Stele was one of the earliest acquisitions, and it has been among the museum’s most prized masterpieces ever since (73.678). In 1973, the same year when Huashan Temple Stele was acquired, the collection of Jian Youwen became available, and it was deemed highly desirable for the new museum. Jian was a historian who worked for the Nationalist government during the Republican period. His interests, network and academic training allowed him to assemble a coherent collection of over a thousand works with particular strengths in Ming and Qing paintings by Guangdong painters and representative works by the Lingnan school founders, including over one hundred works by Gao Jianfu (73.611 and 73.831). To keep the collection intact, Jian was willing to sell it at a great concession, thereby making a substantial donation to the museum. Having long known the significance of the collection, Mr. Watt took advantage of this opportunity and raised necessary funds with Dr. Lee to acquire the entire collection, which formed the core of the university collection. The Jian Youwen collection remains a treasure trove for scholars to explore various themes and topics of Chinese art and history. Moreover, the presence of this initial collection also prompted the establishment of a conservation studio to remount paintings and calligraphy.