SHANGHAI.- Art historian and curator Wai-kam Ho, 80, died in Shanghai due to complications of diabetes, reported The New York Times. Wai-kam Ho was a leading authority on Chinese art. He was a guest curator at the Shanghai Museum at the time of his death.

Maxwell K. Hearn, curator of the department of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum, said: "Professor Wai-kam Ho was one of the great scholars of the field in the depth of his investigations, his command of the literature - the vast literature of not only Chinese art history, but also historical texts, regional gazetteers, collections of poetry, random jottings. He was famous for his ability to delve both deeply and broadly to tease out information from these historical sources, which weren't always an obvious place to look for information."

Wai-kam Ho was born in the Guangdong Province of China on March 26, 1924. He studied at the Lingnan University. He later did graduate work with modern China historian Chen Yinke. Wai-kam Ho then went to study to the United States. He got a joint master's degree in Chinese history and Asian art from Harvard in 1953. He was later curator of Oriental and Chinese art at the Cleveland Museum. He later worked as the Laurence Sickman Curator of Chinese Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.