The Works：Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" in HK, Silk exhibition at HKDI & Ha Bik-chuen's archi

Last week Hong Kong was one of the few key cities that had the chance to see “Salvator Mundi” a rare painting by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci. Just one of no more than 20 surviving paintings by da Vinci, it’s considered one of the art world’s greatest treasures. It’s also the last da Vinci painting to be privately owned.
Just one of no more than 20 surviving paintings by da Vinci, it’s considered one of the art world’s greatest treasures. It’s also the last da Vinci painting to be privately owned.
Unveiled here last Friday, it was on show for just four days before being shipped off. It will be exhibited in two more places and then auctioned in New York next month.
China has been making silk since the Neolithic Age. It wasn’t until the latter half of the first millennium BC when a commercial trade route from China to the Mediterranean Sea opened up that silk reached other parts of the world. This route became known as the Silk Road. In collaboration with the China National Silk Museum, the Hong Kong Design Institute is currently showing in its gallery “In Praise of Silk”, which looks at the Chinese heritage of the finest of fabrics.
When sculptor, printmaker and painter, Ha Bik-chuen died at 84 in 2009, he left behind not only his artworks but also a treasure trove of art related materials and documentation he had been gathering for decades. In recent years, at the request of his family, the Asia Art Archive has been working on a project that involves examining and documenting that archive, including over 100,000 of Ha’s own photographs and 3,500 of his contact sheets.