maweidu

Source: CRI 05-07-2009 14:58 A guest host of a famous lecture program on China Central Television; the curator at China’s first private museum of classic and antique arts; and most of all, an eminent antique collector. Who is this person? Let’s follow our reporter He Fei to walk closer to our hero today, Ma Weidu. This is a hot lecture program currently in China, held by Ma Weidu on China Central Television. On the program, the master in the collection circle teaches people how to distinguish real antiques from fake…

  One man holds fast to a fading code that values heritage and national pride above personal gain and fame. Qin Zhongwei seeks out the legend behind China’s first private museum. In an era when the rest of the country hoarded every spare penny towards a color television for the home, Ma Weidu was scrounging around flea markets and blowing his savings on scruffy doors and window-panels and worn-out chairs and tables. That was in the early 1980s, a misty period wedged between a life-changing revolution that had overturned traditions…

Giuseppe Eskenazi (right) and Ma Weidu, owner of Guan Fu Museum and famous Chinese antique collector Giuseppe Eskenazi, born in 1939 in Istanbul, is widely recognized as one of the most important oriental art dealers in the world. As a guest of Guan Fu Museum and Guan Fu Treasury, Eskenazi was in Shanghai during the past Dragon Boat Festival to launch the Chinese version of his book, “Chinese Art in the Eyes of Giuseppe Eskenazi.” He owns a gallery in London that has been open since 1960 and works at…