THE ARTS
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and art gallery, an occasion which attracted considerable public interest.
In the field of fine art Hong Kong residents and visitors had the opportunity of seeing continuous displays of Hong Kong work and also exhibitions of various kinds from overseas. Museum and art gallery presentations included Children's Art From Britain, Chinese New Year Wood Block Prints, Etchings of Otto Eglau, Japanese Prints 1740-1840, Hong Kong 1850-1910—an exhibition of photographs, Paintings by Douglas Bland, British Prints from the 3rd Tokyo Bienniel, and When Children Paint—an exhibition of pictures by young people of Hong Kong. Attendance figures at these various exhibitions increase with each fresh presentation as the Hong Kong public becomes attuned to gallery viewing. The average number of visitors in 1963 was 1,500 a day. Apart from the displays in the museum and art gallery there were also con- tinuous exhibitions of varying quality in both Chinese and Western styles by local groups, societies, artists, photographers, and private collectors in the exhibition halls which are available for hire. Most of these exhibitions lasted from three to ten days and were well attended.
A particularly attractive exhibition with a local flavour resulted from a find in May of 300 copper coins of the T'ang and Sung dynasties by a farmer who was digging for water in a dry stream bed near Sheung Shui in the New Territories. Covering over 25 reign titles in the three centuries of the Sung period (960-1280), and three in the Tang Dynasty, for reign periods in the seventh and eighth centuries, the coins were cleaned and put on show in the City Hall and aroused much interest.
The four lecture rooms and committee rooms in the City Hall have become the meeting place and in some ways the homes of many cultural bodies which do not have permanent accommoda- tion of their own. The various activities there included weekly sketching classes, daily extra-mural courses by the University of Hong Kong, weekly lectures on Chinese literature, as well as fre- quent film shows and slide talks organized by various societies.
The main cultural activities which took place outside the City Hall included the previously mentioned performances of Peking opera by the Peking Opera Troupe, a number of exhibitions in