Loke Wan Tho Collection

A substantial collection of photographs and negatives taken by Loke Wan Tho during his ornithological expeditions across the Pacific, Asia and Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s. The collection also includes extensive personal papers and around 230 books on topics such as ornithology, photography, art, architecture, journalism, and the history and politics of Malaya.

Animals Environment Photography

Collection highlights

http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-742754582

Key items in the collection

Highlights from this collection demonstrate its historical significance and variety.

The Loke Wan Tho Collection contains 232 books and reprints, mostly dating from 1945–64. The principal subjects are ornithology and photography, and there are also works on:

cinematography
art
architecture
journalism
Malayan fauna and flora
Malayan history
constitutional change in Malaya
the formation of Malaysia and economics.

There are a number of travel guides and also several articles by Loke Wan Tho on ornithological subjects.

The papers of Lok Wan Tho are extensive. Dating from 1942 to 1964, they include documents about:

his father
private correspondence
correspondence with ornithologists and photographers
office diaries and memoranda
speeches
travel journals and photographs
tape recordings of speeches and interviews
papers relating to badminton
papers concerning universities and other organisations
newspaper cuttings
scrapbooks
letters of condolence on his death.

The collection includes 55 maps that were acquired by Loke Wan Tho in his travels in Europe, Asia, the United States and Australia. They are mostly road maps published in the period 1945–64.

There are a very large number of contact prints and negatives taken by Loke Wan Tho on his ornithological expeditions to:

Papua New Guinea (1952)
North Borneo (1953)
Europe (1954)
Sikkim (1955)
India (1957)
Sarawak (1957)
Brunei (1958)
Cambodia (1958)
Finland (1958)
Norway (1958)
Sweden (1958)
Kutch (1960)
Australia (1961)
Fiji (1961).

There are also photographs of his visits to Kashmir (1951) and Angkor Wat in Cambodia (1954, 1956).

The collection also contains many exhibition prints, mainly of birds. Most of them were taken by Loke Wan Tho, but they include prints by:

Salim Ali
A Aubrey Bodine
Arthur Christiansen
Kurt Ellstrom
Hedda Morrison
KW Wong.

About Dato Loke Wan Tho

Dato Loke Wan Tho (1915–1964) was the son of Loke Yew, one of Malaya’s first millionaires and philanthropists. He was born in Kuala Lumpur and educated at the Victorian Institution, Chillon College in Montreux, King’s College, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics.

Business career

In 1946, Loke became chairman of the Cathay Company, which then owned two cinemas in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Within 15 years, the company had expanded to include 60 cinemas, two studios and four hotels. He chaired around 30 other companies in sectors including banking, trading, insurance, rubber, tin, shipping, and film production and distribution. He also chaired the Straits Times, Malayan Airways, the Singapore Telephone Board and the National Library of Singapore Board.

Ornithology and photography

Loke had wide interests and extraordinary energy. After meeting Salim Ali, curator of the Natural History Museum in Bombay, in 1942, he developed a passion for ornithology. He travelled extensively—often with Ali and British proconsul Malcolm MacDonald—to India, Kashmir, Sarawak, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Finland and other places to photograph birds and archaeological sites. Many of his photographs appeared in MacDonald’s book Angkor (1958).

In 1961, Loke visited Australia, staying with Professor Jock Marshall and camping in the Murray Mallee region with Eric Worrell, Russell Drysdale and others. His own book was published in 1957, A Company of Birds.

Art collecting and legacy

Loke was Malaysia’s leading art collector, with a collection that spanned pre-Han pottery to modern paintings. He and his wife died in a plane crash in Taiwan in 1964.

Background to the collection

The collection was donated by the executors of Loke Wan Tho in 1978.

The books in the Loke Wan Tho Collection have been catalogued individually and are housed in the New Series pool in the general collection. The call numbers have the prefix NS.

The Manuscripts collection holds the manuscripts and personal papers. The finding aid is incomplete: it covers series 1, 2, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 24, 26 and 27.

The Maps collection holds the Maps. Use the finding aid.

The photographs are held in both the Manuscripts and Pictures collections. The former are filed with the travel journals and related papers.

Collections of photographs and artworks assembled by Loke Wan Tho are held in the National Museum of Malaysia, the Singapore Art Gallery and the National Library of Singapore.

Most of the Angkor Wat photographs were donated to the University of Singapore Art Museum, the Institute of South East Asian Studies and the Smithsonian Institution.

The National Library of Singapore holds microfilm copies of part of the collection in the National Library of Australia.

This guide was prepared using these references:

Kam Hing Lee and Chow Mun Seong, Biographical Dictionary of the Chinese in Malaysia, Pelanduk Publications, Petaling Jaya, 1997, pp. 122–5.
Loke Wan Tho Papers, MS 6057/4/1–2.
Obituary of Loke Wan Tho, The Times (London), 30 June 1964, p. 12.
Straits Times, 24 June 1964, pp. 1, 18.