Hong Kong treated to rare collection of African American art and history

It’s fair to say that most Hongkongers have only a cursory acquaintance with the history of African Americans. They may be aware of the African slave trade, segregation, Martin Luther King Jnr and may have seen the Oscar-winning film, 12 Years a Slave. In a city where a black face is as rare as a smile on a Hong Kong shopkeeper, a more detailed understanding of the story from slavery to President Barack Obama may seem remote, irrelevant and unnecessary.

An upcoming exhibition at the University of Hong Kong argues that African American history is anything but marginal, even in Asia.

Rising Above: The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection, is a selection of documents and art dating back to the 16th century that are on loan from Bernard Kinsey, an American business consultant and his wife Shirley, and it is open to the public from December 9 at the University Museum and Art Gallery.

The exhibition will be accompanies by a series of public seminars, credit-bearing courses for undergraduates and the publication of academic articles.

“Our collection is a chance for people to have a dialogue about things they have not discovered before. They will see that we are more alike than we are dissimilar, that the Kinsey Collection is a shared history of how America became America and how everything since America’s foundation was predicated by slavery, the recent presidential election included,” says Kinsey, who has never shown his collection outside North America until now.