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THE ARTS
the newly opened Chatham Gallery, and various concerts given in the New Territories by the Music Society of Hong Kong who also presented private recitals in the homes of its members and a number of sessions of experimental theatre conducted by the Garrison Players.
GOVERNMENT COLLECTIONS
The Government Collections of pictorial material consist of the Ho Tung Collection, the Chater Collection, and the Law and Sayer Collections. They contain more than 700 items including paintings, prints, engravings and photographs. They illustrate the growth and development of Hong Kong, and life in the Colony, Macau and the China Coast area during the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies. On the opening of the City Hall an exhibition which included many of the paintings in the collections was arranged, and an exhibition of old photographs of Hong Kong was shown later.
Arrangements were made to transfer the Government's Henry Yeung Collection of Chinese Ceramics from the University, where it had been on display for some years pending the completion of the City Hall. The collection comprises 166 pieces, and consists of some fine grave pottery of the Han Dynasty, a series of early bronze mirrors, and outstanding pieces of Ming porcelain. Through- out the year the collection of Chinese antiquities consisting of ceramics, sculpture, painting, textiles and bronze continued to grow. A number of paintings and sculptures were also added to the collection of works by local artists.
The Maglioni Collection of books and archaeological material was donated to the Government by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong in 1954. Both the books and the archaeological collection are on loan to the University where they are available to scholars and research students.
The City Hall library now possesses a collection of approxi- mately 125,000 items, including the Kotewall Collection, also a gift to the Government, consisting of 14,825 volumes mainly in Chinese, and the Hok Hoi Library of 34,415 volumes of Chinese classical literature which is on permanent loan to Government. The lending department has almost 40,000 books available for home reading. These consist of roughly equal numbers of Chinese