This year’s William Willetts Lecture will be held on Friday, 14 March in the Visitors’ Room of the Singapore National Library (7:00-8:30 pm). Our speaker will be former SEACS President and founding director of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and the Peranakan Museum (TPM), Dr. Kenson Kwok, who will be sharing with us the story of the Frank and Pamela Hickley Dehua Collection.
Our speaker is an architect and environmental psychologist by training. The ceramic medium has been an abiding interest for him since childhood. Landing in the museum world in mid-career was therefore a very happy accident. In retirement after 18 years at the ACM, he continues to be active in the museum sector.
The talk describes the journey of a collection of blanc de Chine – how it travelled from the home of Singapore collectors Frank and Pamela Hickley, via Dehua to a new home in the Asian Civilisations Museum. A sizeable group of pieces from the collection remains on permanent view at the ACM today. The talk closes with an assessment of the collection with reference to recent archaeological excavations, and several examples of recent production from Dehua, some of which have entered the museum’s collection.
SEACS’ annual William Willetts Lecture is open to the public, free to all, and generally follows the Society’s AGM (which will this year precede Dr. Kwok’s talk). SEACS members will receive an announcement of the AGM and the lecture by mail. The public is invited to join at the conclusion of the AGM. No reservation is required but seating will be on a first-come/first-served basis.
