Museums and Campus Ecology

# Museums and Campus Ecology

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) Comprehensive Information Database · 05 Campus Module (Supplementary)

Tucked away on the HKU campus are two museums of real substance: one is the oldest continuously operated museum in Hong Kong—the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), whose holdings span Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the Qing dynasty; the other, more recent, is the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum, housing over fifty thousand specimens. This article follows two threads—"collections" and "ecology / nature"—surveying HKU's exhibition spaces and its campus natural environment.

Section note: This article focuses on museum collections and ecological species; the architectural histories of the buildings housing the museums (Fung Ping Shan Building, Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building) are covered in "Iconic Buildings and Landmarks" and "Campus Buildings and Venues Directory"; the locations of off-campus ecological sites (the Swire Institute of Marine Science at Cape d'Aguilar) are addressed in "Campus Geography".

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# 0. HKU Campus Exhibition Spaces at a Glance

Positioning: HKU is home to both "Hong Kong's oldest art museum (UMAG)" and "Hong Kong's first biodiversity museum (HKBM)"; the former is distinguished by its Chinese art holdings and scholarly rigour, the latter by the scale of its specimen collection and its environmental education mission.

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# 1. The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG): Hong Kong's Oldest Museum

# 1.1 Institutional History: From Fung Ping Shan Library to UMAG

The origins of the University Museum and Art Gallery trace back to Fung Ping Shan Building. According to UMAG:

• In 1932, Fung Ping Shan Building (originally the Fung Ping Shan Library) was completed^※;
• In 1953, the "Museum of Chinese Art and Archaeology" was established^※;
• On 4 April 1955, the museum officially opened to the public^※;
• On 31 January 1964, it was renamed the "Fung Ping Shan Museum"^※;
• On 1 July 1994, it was merged to form the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG)^※;
• On 8 November 1996, the T.T. Tsui Building opened^※;
• In 2018, Fung Ping Shan Building was declared a statutory monument^※.

(All above per UMAG · History; the statutory monument status of Fung Ping Shan Building is also recorded by the AMO · HKU Heritage)

According to UMAG, it is "the oldest continuously operated museum in Hong Kong"^※ (per UMAG · History). This is one of the weightiest "firsts" among HKU's campus cultural facilities.

# 1.2 The Collections: From the Neolithic to the Twenty-First Century

According to UMAG, over the past seventy-plus years the museum has built up diverse holdings, including ceramics and bronzes from the Neolithic period (c. 7000–c. 2100 BC) to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), as well as traditional and modern paintings from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to the twenty-first century^※ (per UMAG · History). In more detail:

• Bronzes: According to UMAG, the collection includes ritual vessels from the Shang (c. 1600–c. 1100 BC) and Western Zhou (c. 1100–771 BC) dynasties, and a series of bronze mirrors from the Eastern Zhou (770–256 BC) to the Tang dynasty^※ (per UMAG · History).
• Nestorian crosses: According to UMAG, the museum holds the world's largest known collection of Nestorian crosses from the Mongol-Yuan period (1271–1368)^※ (per UMAG · History). This is one of UMAG's most internationally recognised special collections.
• Paintings: According to UMAG, holdings include Chinese ink paintings from the Ming dynasty to the present, and twentieth-century Chinese oil paintings^※ (per UMAG · History).

# 1.2.1 The Nestorian Crosses: How a British Postal Official's Collection Ended Up at HKU

Behind this "world's largest" collection of Yuan-dynasty Nestorian crosses lies a collecting history with a touch of serendipity. According to UMAG's collection page, the hoard totals 966 pieces, mainly cast in bronze, and is accessioned under HKU.B.1961.0243^※ (per UMAG · Nestorian Crosses). These Nestorian bronze crosses were cast during the Yuan dynasty (1272–1368) in the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia; most measure between 3 and 8 cm, take the form of flat plaque-like ornaments with a lug on the reverse, and are presumed to have been worn on the person—possibly also serving as personal seals.

According to publicly collated accounts, the collection was initially assembled by F. A. Nixon, who served as British Postal Commissioner in Beijing during the 1930s and 1940s and gathered these Nestorian artefacts across north China during his posting. The collection was subsequently purchased by the Lee Hysan Estate Company and donated to the University of Hong Kong in 1961—the credit line on UMAG's collection page duly records it as a "Gift of Lee Hysan Estate Company." From 10 June 2015, UMAG placed over 700 re-catalogued Nestorian crosses on public display, concurrently organising an international symposium on Nestorian studies and public lectures—the most significant public presentation of this special collection in recent years. From a British postal official's personal collection in north China, to acquisition by a Hong Kong family enterprise, to permanent custody at HKU, the journey of these crosses is itself a microcosm of the modern circulation of Chinese artefacts between East and West.

# 1.3 The Premises

UMAG now comprises two buildings: Fung Ping Shan Building (1932, a statutory monument) and the T.T. Tsui Building (opened 1996). The architectural history of Fung Ping Shan Building (red brick, donor Fung Ping Shan, declared a monument in 2018) is covered in "Iconic Buildings and Landmarks". According to UMAG, a lift was installed in Fung Ping Shan Building in 2013^※ (per UMAG · History) to improve barrier-free access to this listed heritage building.

# 1.2.2 The Invisible Support Behind the Collections: The Conservation Laboratory

A museum that has operated continuously for over seventy years cannot function without robust professional conservation support. According to HKU Libraries, in 2010 the University established an in-house conservation laboratory within its Preservation Centre, making it the only academic institution in Hong Kong with a dedicated paper-and-artefact conservation facility^※; the Centre is staffed by four conservators and four conservation technicians, who handle basic to complex conservation work on HKU's Western and Oriental rare books, archives, and manuscripts. UMAG itself launched the "UMAG_STArts" initiative in 2020, exploring the symbiosis between science, technology, and the arts—using interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the intersection of art history, cultural-heritage conservation, and emerging technologies, and collaborating with researchers in related fields to explore techniques for the transfer and preservation of Chinese ceramic artefacts. This "behind-the-scenes" conservation and preservation work forms the institutional foundation that allows UMAG to keep exhibiting collections spanning several millennia without their succumbing to age and decay.

# 1.3.1 Positioning: More Than a Repository—Also a Teaching and Public Platform

UMAG conceives of its role as extending beyond "safeguarding antiquities." According to the museum's vision page, UMAG strives to create "art and cultural experiences that are accessible to all," to cultivate public appreciation of the arts, and to strengthen the cultural values of Hong Kong society^※. Per the same page, UMAG supports cross-departmental academic research and teaching at HKU on the one hand, while on the other it provides public access to its Chinese art and cultural holdings, trains museum professionals (through internship and fellowship programmes), promotes education in traditional, modern, and contemporary art, and facilitates international cultural exchange—the museum sets itself the ambition of attaining a leading position in advancing arts education in Hong Kong. This positioning makes clear that UMAG is both an internal teaching resource for HKU and a component of Hong Kong's broader cultural ecosystem—its role is wider than that of a straightforward "university museum."

# 1.4 Permanent and Rotating: A Continuously Operating Museum

As the "oldest continuously operated museum in Hong Kong," UMAG sustains its vitality not only through its permanent collections but also through a programme of rotating special exhibitions. Taking the last two years as an example, the museum has hosted "Marvellous Mountains and Rivers: Explorations in Chinese Landscape Painting" (February–May 2025); a joint exhibition by Japanese printmakers Akira Kurosaki and Tadayoshi Nakabayashi (October 2024–February 2025); a documentary photography exhibition of 1920s Beijing by the German photographer Heinz von Perckhammer; and an exhibition of watercolours and photography by local artist David Clarke^※. This curatorial rhythm—permanent Chinese antiquities alongside rotating contemporary/modern themed exhibitions—allows UMAG to be a museum of historical artefacts while also engaging continuously in curatorial conversations around contemporary art and the history of photography. According to UMAG, admission is generally free, though fees may apply for certain special events or workshops^※.

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# 2. Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum (HKBM): Natural History and Specimens

The other exhibition venue on the HKU campus is the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum, which falls under the Faculty of Science and is housed within the Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building.

According to the Faculty of Science, the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum is Hong Kong's first museum dedicated to biodiversity, holding over 50,000 specimens and constituting the largest and most comprehensive biodiversity collection in the city^※ (per HKBM · HKU Faculty of Science). According to museum materials, some of the species were collected between the 1920s and 1970s; several are now classified as threatened, making them a vital natural legacy to be passed on to future generations^※ (per HKBM · HKU Faculty of Science).

# 2.1 Origins of the Collection: Specimens without a Donor's Name

The collection history of the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum predates its formal opening by nearly a century. As collated from the museum's official website, the story can be traced to 1923—specimens collected over time by successive generations of HKU faculty and students gradually accumulated into foundational material for research and teaching across the biological sciences; the earliest batch of specimens dates to the early 1920s^※ (per Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum · The History). According to museum sources, no records currently survive to show who initiated or donated funds to establish this earliest collection^※—these specimens thus appear more like the natural accretion of fieldwork by generations of HKU staff and students than the one-off gift of an individual benefactor. In 1998, the School of Biological Sciences moved to its present premises, and the collection moved with it to the second floor, south wing of the Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building, where it remains to this day^※ (per the same source).

# 2.2 Formal Opening: May 2021

This collection, accumulated over nearly a century, only opened to the public in the form of a "museum" in recent years. According to the museum website, the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum officially opened to the public on 22 May 2021^※ (per Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum · The History), managed by a specialist team from the School of Biological Sciences and supported by a range of scientists and partners. From scattered specimens in the 1920s, to systematic curation in 1998, to formal opening in 2021—this timeline shows that the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum is not a new institution "built from scratch," but a body of teaching material accumulated over nearly a hundred years that has finally been "accredited" as a natural history museum for the public. According to museum sources, the core mission of the museum integrates the three functions of research, education, and conservation, with the Hong Kong ecosystem's estimated 30,000-plus species^※ serving as the backdrop for its educational narrative; the museum also accepts group and individual visit bookings and has organised public-engagement activities such as an "Ant Photography Competition," linking its specimen holdings with citizen science and nature education.

The Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building that houses the museum was, according to HKU Giving, given by Mrs. Kadoorie in memory of her late husband, Lord Lawrence Kadoorie, and opened on 17 January 2000; it encompasses research in zoology, botany, ecology, and biodiversity^※ (per HKU Giving · Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building). The building's architectural background is covered in "Campus Buildings and Venues Directory".

Note: The name "Kadoorie" appears twice on the HKU campus but refers to two distinct entities—the Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building, donated by Mrs. Kadoorie in memory of her husband and housing the Biodiversity Museum, and the Kadoorie Centre (see §3.3 below), established with funding from the Kadoorie brothers themselves at Shek Kong in the New Territories. While both represent Kadoorie family support for the natural sciences at HKU, the donors, location, and institutional nature differ; this database treats them as separate entries and does not conflate them.

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# 3. Campus Ecology and the Natural Environment

The HKU Main Campus is embedded into the hillside on the western side of Hong Kong Island, bordered to the north by Lung Fu Shan country park, and to the south by Pokfulam and the coast. Its ecological resources derive as much from urban landscaping as from the adjacent countryside and marine areas.

# 3.1 Lung Fu Shan and Hillside Greening

The northern foot of the Main Campus is Lung Fu Shan. According to Wikipedia, the HKU Main Campus is sited on the slopes of Lung Fu Shan along Bonham Road and Pokfulam Road^※ (per Campuses of HKU · Wikipedia). According to the HKU Estates Office, the hilly terrain around Pokfulam gives the campus "a unique landscape," with a number of popular gardens and courtyards within its boundaries^※ (per HKU Estates · Our Campuses). These gardens, courtyards, and the red-brick statutory monuments create an interplay of green and heritage that forms an integral part of HKU's campus scenery.

According to Wikipedia, Lung Fu Shan Country Park was designated on 18 December 1998^※ and is a habitat for over a hundred bird and butterfly species; it constitutes the ecological hinterland—the "back hill"—of the Main Campus. Here HKU and the Environmental Protection Department operate the Lung Fu Shan Environmental Education Centre—which, according to the centre's own materials, opened in April 2008 as a collaboration between the Environmental Protection Department and HKU, the first partnership of its kind between the government and a local tertiary institution^※, using education to promote nature conservation and linking the University, the government, and the community. Since 2017 the centre has run a BioBlitz citizen-science event; the first edition mustered around 100 participants and volunteers who, guided by eleven experts, recorded 151 species in Lung Fu Shan Country Park. According to the centre, 144 bird species have now been recorded on Lung Fu Shan. The centre also regularly runs citizen-science projects such as the "Black Kite Public Census," enabling the public to contribute to long-term monitoring of local species. HKU's geographical position "backed by Lung Fu Shan" (covered in detail in "Campus Geography") is therefore more than a scenic description—it is the physical foundation underpinning a whole suite of environmental education and citizen-science initiatives.

# 3.2 Cape d'Aguilar: The Swire Institute of Marine Science and Coastal Ecology

HKU's marine ecology research base is at Cape d'Aguilar, at the southern tip of Hong Kong Island. According to the Faculty of Science, the Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS) was originally conceived by Professor Brian S. Morton with support from the Swire Group, and opened in 1990 by the Chairman of Swire and the then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Wang Gungwu, with an initial complement of just three academic staff, two postdoctoral researchers, and a dozen or so postgraduate students^※; as demand for marine science research grew, the institute was expanded and renamed the Swire Institute of Marine Science in 1994. The Institute is situated on the shore of the Cape d'Aguilar Marine Reserve, Hong Kong's only marine protected area, and concentrates on themes including habitat destruction and restoration in coastal ecosystems, global change and adaptation, and overexploitation and sustainability. In 2021, with support from the Swire Trust, the Institute completed an extension and renovation of its main building to accommodate its growing cohort of researchers and postgraduates.

# 3.3 Shek Kong: The Kadoorie Centre

In Shek Kong, in the New Territories, HKU maintains the Kadoorie Centre. According to the HKU Estates Office, the centre occupies around 10 hectares^※ (per HKU Estates · Our Campuses), providing the University with land for countryside, agricultural, and ecological research. As compiled from public records, the centre was established with a donation from the Kadoorie brothers (Lord Kadoorie and his younger brother, Sir Horace Kadoorie) in June 1986^※; its antecedents can be traced to the "Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association" founded in 1951 and an experimental farm set up at Shek Kong in 1956, whose original purpose was to help local farmers and demobilised Gurkha soldiers improve their agricultural and livestock techniques and raise their incomes. In 1995, an ordinance of the Hong Kong Legislative Council formally established the "Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Corporation," and the centre has since progressively transformed into a nature conservation, organic farming, and environmental education institution—a shift from "agricultural extension" to "ecological conservation" that forms an intriguing period-pairing with HKU's own journey from colonial institution to modern, comprehensive research university.

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# 3a. Two Museums, Two Natures: A Summing Up

Placing UMAG and the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum side by side reveals a telling contrast in HKU's campus cultural infrastructure: one is devoted to "humanistic nature"—narrating the longue durée of Chinese art and civilisation through bronzes, ceramics, and ink paintings; the other is devoted to "biological nature"—chronicling the vicissitudes of Hong Kong's local ecology through specimens and species records. The first collection originated in the active donations of successive generations of collectors and benefactors (Fung Ping Shan, the Lee Hysan Estate Company); the second originated almost anonymously—built up inadvertently through the fieldwork of successive cohorts of staff and students, with not even the initial initiator's name surviving. In a sense, this pairing also echoes the HKU ecological map described in §3 of this article: from the Lung Fu Shan Environmental Education Centre on the campus's northern slope, to the Swire Institute of Marine Science at Cape d'Aguilar in the south, to the Kadoorie Centre at Shek Kong in the New Territories, HKU's natural-science teaching facilities likewise exhibit this geographical character of being "parcelled out across the urban hillside" (see "Campus Geography" for details)—the exhibition spaces and ecological outposts, though scattered, together constitute HKU's sustained documentation, along the twin threads of the humanities and the natural world, of the city and the land that is Hong Kong.

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# 4. Unverified / Pending Verification

• Specific inclusion of HKU campus trees on the "Old and Valuable Trees" register: This search did not locate authoritative official data listing every registered old or valuable tree on the HKU campus → marked "unverified"; no specific count is conjectured.
• Initiator and donor of the earliest Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum specimens: The museum's official website states explicitly that "there are no records of who initiated or who donated to establish" the collection → this article reports "unrecorded" as per the source; no name is conjectured.
• Precise collection-path details for the Nestorian crosses (the specific years of Nixon's collecting, the exact year of purchase by the Lee Hysan Estate Company): Public sources give only the broad timeframes "1930s–1940s" and "donated to HKU in 1961"; year-by-year details await supplementary sources.

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