Art Museum receives Outstanding University of Chicago Partner Award

A booklet prepared by UChicago student, Andie Fialkoff, who joined SURP and interned at CUHK Art Museum in 2018 for the ‘Art of War: Chinese Woodcuts from Yan’an ca. 1944’ exhibition at UChicago HK.

The Art Museum at CUHK has hosted four summer interns from the University of Chicago (UChicago) since 2017. In recognition of its unwavering support and continued commitment to creating outstanding experiences for UChicago students, the Art Museum was honoured with the ‘Outstanding UChicago Partner Award’ by UChicago earlier this year.

The award is especially meaningful to Prof. Josh Yiu, Director of the Art Museum and an alumnus of UChicago. He said, ‘We are grateful to have the opportunity to host UChicago students with the sponsorship of the Jeff Metcalf Internship Program. It allows UChicago students to pursue internships internationally, and it benefits non-profit organisations like the Art Museum of CUHK which may not be in a position to compensate interns for their work.’

UChicago encourages its students to travel abroad for studies and internships. With the opening of the UChicago Yuen Campus in Hong Kong (UChicago HK), Hong Kong has become the second most popular overseas destination for UChicago students. While at the Art Museum, UChicago students undertook a range of museum work, such as furnishing collection management data, conducting research on exhibitions, and editing and proofreading manuscripts. In 2018, an intern curated an exhibition of World War II woodcut prints, which was featured as the inaugural exhibition at UChicago HK.

In the last two years, the hosting of students were coordinated through the Summer Undergraduate Research Programme (SURP) run by the Office of Academic Links. Prof. Yiu remarked, ‘SURP complements the Jeff Metcalf Internship Program perfectly. While the latter supports the interns financially, SURP provides pastoral care and cultural immersion and social programmes, offering students a comprehensive summer research experience.’

This summer, the Art Museum will continue to engage UChicago interns to work on its educational programmes and catalogue, though remotely.

UChicago has been a partner of CUHK since 1996 with the establishment of an MBA student exchange programme. Over the years, the two universities have also built collaborations in economics and physics, and most recently, we have jointly established an executive education programme on venture launch.

Hosting some one hundred students each year, SURP is a research programme pairing aspiring students with CUHK researchers. It promotes the University’s research strengths and attracts students to pursue postgraduate studies at CUHK. The programme will be suspended this summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic.