Coaxing secrets from drifting art

The collector as detective

When Kuang talks about old paintings, his language often slips into the vocabulary of criminal investigation — cold cases, broken chains of custody, and the need to assess the evidence rather than simply assert it.

The habit dates back to his youth. In the 1970s, while helping at a local police station, he read through hundreds of original criminal case files.

"Even then, I wanted to be a detective," he says.

That instinct never left him. In 1990, after graduating from the postgraduate program at the Harbin Institute of Technology in the capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, Kuang began to apply what he called "engineering optimization plus philosophy plus criminal investigation principles" to solve "millennium cold cases" in art history.

This methodology sharply contrasts with that of conservative museum professionals who, according to Kuang, rarely see major works outside museums and often "don't dare touch them" due to fear of academic criticism.

Lacking traditional art history credentials, Kuang embraces his status as an "outlaw", which he believes gives him the freedom to take intellectual risks.

His initial foray into collecting, around 1998, was fueled by a "simple emotion". While commuting to a programming school in Virginia, where he taught, he started visiting American antique stores to admire Chinese artworks.

"If you encounter these works, it's like seeing a baby crying by the roadside," he says.

"You can't just walk past; you have to pick them up."

Each acquisition came with an effort to trace provenance and clarify historical clues.

A Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) painting he purchased early on became a turning point.

After nearly two years of self-directed study, he determined that the work was a later copy rather than an original.

The process led him to read foundational art history texts, forming what he describes as a solid practical and theoretical base.

Kuang and his wife narrowed their focus to oil paintings featuring Qing Dynasty coastal defense infrastructure like forts and warships.

These images, they believe, are not only artworks, but also irreplaceable historical records of a world that largely drifted overseas.

"We call it 'drifting history'," Kuang says.

"The more we studied, the more we realized how much of the Qing Dynasty's visual record was not preserved in China. We started writing articles about China trade paintings."