In Conversation With…Yu-ping Luk, Co-curator of the British Museum’s upcoming exhibition Silk Roads
August 2024
“I grew up in Hong Kong and while my family is interested in Chinese culture, my personal interest in Chinese art history only seriously developed during my undergraduate studies in Australia.” At the time there weren’t many Asian art courses offered at the University of Melbourne. Nevertheless, Yu-ping developed a curiosity about Chinese art history and started to consider it as a potential career path.
She returned to Hong Kong after her undergraduate degree. There she studied at the University of Hong Kong and worked at its University Museum and Art Gallery, before moving to the U.K. for her doctoral studies: “I had the good fortune of getting into a programme with Professor Craig Clunas, a specialist in Chinese Art History. I spent a year studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London before transferring to the University of Oxford.” Looking back at her PhD years, “Professor Clunas’ interest and openness to learn from different disciplines and areas of art history have stayed with me and have proved very useful in my career, especially when dealing with an exhibition like the Silk Roads where you’re covering a wide variety of topics.”
After her doctorate, Yu-ping became assistant professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, where she taught art history for two years, but still had the curating bug. In 2013, she applied and accepted a Project Curator role for the Ming: 50 Years that Changed China exhibition curated by Jessica Harrison-Hall and Craig Clunas at the British Museum. She has worked in the museum sector ever since; her role today as a curator at the British Museum covers the Chinese paintings, prints and Central Asian collections.
Her current project, Silk Roads, which has been in the making since 2019 and is co-curated with Sue Brunning and Elisabeth R. O’Connell, will open on 26 September this year. On the theme of the show, Yu-ping notes: “One of the biggest challenges at first was to define a concept as broad as the “Silk Roads”, but luckily, we soon came to an agreement. The Silk Roads, as we define it, is a history of connections, and the exploration of the movements of people, objects, and ideas. We focus on a 500-year timespan, from about 500 to 1000 CE.”
Over 300 objects will be presented in the exhibition, of which many are from the British Museum’s own collection. Yu-ping also highlights objects from 29 national and international lenders including: “a 6-meter mural of the Hall of the Ambassadors, Samarkand, on loan from Uzbekistan, that reveals the prosperous lifestyle of the Sogdians of Central Asia who were major traders at the time. Other loans are some of the 60,000 pieces of Chinese ceramic, gold, and silver objects from a 9th century shipwreck discovered off the coast of Indonesia. One of my favourites is a ‘silk princess’ painting on a wooden panel, dated AD 600-800, which tells the story of the spread of silk farming to northwest China. The painting shows the princess with silkworm eggs and mulberry tree seeds hidden in her headdress as she prepares to marry the king of Khotan. These are all incredible treasure-like objects.”
Yu-ping and her colleagues were in contact with 29 organisations to bring together these loans: “it was challenging and fun to build on those relationships. It’s a bit of a logistical feat but the topic of Silk Roads required us to think big. This exhibition about connections in the past has been made possible by connections in the present which captures the spirit of the Silk Roads.”
When asked about the theft of items that took place at the museum last year, Yu-ping reiterates: “A priority of the museum today is the digitisation and documentation of its whole collection. My day-to-day job includes making the collections accessible and encouraging research.” She adds that this wouldn’t be possible without funding: “Funding impacts the whole museum including our day-to-day work and curatorial roles. Support, like the Foundation’s, also make our special exhibitions possible, enabling us to share new perspectives and remarkable objects with audiences.”
HFF supported the Silk Roads exhibition with a £300,000 grant to the British Museum. The exhibition opens on 26 September 2024.