On the eve of Sotheby’s Hong Kong sales of Chinese Contemporary art (tune in Monday for those results) Georgina Adam reports in the Financial Times on the Getty’s acquisition of some photographs from a pivotal collector in the field, Larry Warsh:

Now Warsh, whose 700-strong holding also includes painting and sculpture, has sold nine works by two Chinese photographers to the Getty Museum in California. He values the group at $100,000 but gave the museum, he says, “a healthy discount”.

It is the Getty’s first big acquisition in this field. The works are by Wang Qingsong and Hai Bo, and include Hai Bo’s “I am Chairman Mao’s Red Guard” (2000), showing the same person now and when she was a young militant, and Wang Qingsong’s dolled-up “New Women” (2000, below). “The Getty has one of the largest collections of photography in the world, and it is important for it to add Chinese contemporary photography to its holdings,” says Warsh.

New Women and the Red Guard (Financial Times)