Huang Kam Chak Yee Collection 

In October 2024 Dr Chenya Huang kindly agreed to gift his wife's collection to Durham University together with a generous gift of more than £600,000 to support the cataloguing, research and display of the collection at the Oriental Museum.  

The Huang Kam Chak Yee Collection was created by the late Mrs Huang (1943-2021) over more than 40 years. It focuses on Chinese women and their lives, including objects ranging from lacquer storage boxes and wooden cake moulds to silk textiles and hairpins decorated with king fisher feathers.  

The Collection complements the existing Chinese collections at the Oriental Museum with their strengths in jade and ceramics by adding more depth in areas such as metal jewellery, lacquer and wooden objects and fills major gaps through its focus on women and their stories.  

Research into the Collection 

Dr Huang's generous funding will support the appointment of an assistant curator for two years and a photographer for one year, both focused on opening up Mrs Huang's collection to students, researchers and the public.

Dr Tullia Fraser was appointed as the Assistant Curator in July 2025, and Matthew Buick was appointed as the photographer in March 2026. 

Cataloguing efforts are ongoing on Mrs Huang’s collection, which is made available via our online Discover database.  In January 2026, we were pleased to invite Ms Sau Fong Chan (V&A) and Dr Rachel Silberstein (SOAS) to view the Collection alongside staff, volunteers, and students. Their insights greatly increased our understanding of Chinese textiles within Mrs Huang’s collection. The Collection is also the focus of student placements and gradually being utilised as a research resource within and beyond Durham University.

Exhibiting the Collection 

Under the guidance of  Dr Qin Cao a special exhibition focused on highlights of the collection opens on 16 May 2026. Everyday Elegance: Daily Lives of Women in Late Qing China is the public debut of Mrs Huang's collection.  It showcases more than 80 objects from the Collection, with additional highlights drawn from the Oriental Museum's permanent Chinese collections.  The exhibition explores the daily lives of women in Late Qing China through the colloquial 'necessities of life': dress, food, home and movement.  The exhibition is free to visit at the Oriental Museum. 

Dr Huang's generous financial support to the Oriental Museum is not just focused on his wife's collection.  This project includes the complete refurbishment of the museum's temporary exhibition gallery and the final phase of upgrades to our permanent China Gallery, including the installation of new state-of-the-art display cases in both galleries. These refurbishments were undertaken between late 2025 and early 2026, improving environmental conditions and security for our objects, while expanding the possibilities of the number and types of objects we can display. In recognition of the importance of Dr Huang's gift, our special exhibition gallery will be renamed the Huang Kam Chak Yee Gallery on 15 May 2026 in Mrs Huang’s honour.   

Upcoming plans for the Collection 

Further research and full colour photography of the Collection will continue to open it up to anyone interested in the material culture pertaining to women and children’s lives in Late Qing and early Republican China; men’s fashion in the same period; culinary history in China; women’s fashion in Hong Kong in the 1980s–1990s.  

Two online exhibitions around the Collection will be launched in autumn 2026. A full bilingual publication of the collection will be launched in 2027, and a permanent display focused on the lives of Chinese women will be created within our Malcolm MacDonald Gallery of Chinese Art and Archaeology.