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the past years by purchase and, occasionally, by gift. At present, there are more than 700 items, including paintings, watercolours, drawings, lithographs and engravings. They form a unique pictorial record of Sino-British contacts in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These are supplemented by about 1,400 old photographs which vividly portray the development of Hong Kong since 1870.
Works by contemporary Hong Kong artists, as well as prints by artists in other parts of Asia, make up the collection of local and contemporary art.
The limited space of the City Museum and Art Gallery does not allow a permanent display of all the available material. Selections from the Chinese antiquities collection form the permanent display in the museum section, while temporary exhibitions from the other collections are arranged on a regular basis in a section of the Art Gallery. The displays include small educational exhibits which are specially prepared by the City Museum and Art Gallery staff to be made available for wider circulation, on loan, among local schools. The City Museum and Art Gallery also presents about 10 tem- porary exhibitions each year. These cover a wide field of interest, reflecting the complex cultural background of the people of Hong Kong. Among the most popular exhibitions organised in 1971 was that of Kwangtung, Macau and Hong Kong currency held in November during the second Festival of Hong Kong. The exhibition, representing a comprehensive survey of the subject, consisted of old coins and banknotes, mainly drawn from the Museum's own col- lection, but with some interesting material on loan from other local sources. Some Kwangtung coins dated as far back as the Tang Dynasty (AD 620-907). Another popular exhibition of the year was the sixth Children's Art Exhibition which is held every two years. During the year, one special exhibition came from abroad and one was sent overseas. The former was an exhibition of Madhubani folk paintings from India, and the latter an exhibition of contem- porary Hong Kong art selected from the City Museum and Art Gallery's collections. This was shipped to Britain for special display in the Commonwealth Institute of London and Edinburgh and the City Art Galleries of Manchester and Bristol, where it received favourable comments.
The City Museum and Art Gallery continued to present a monthly programme of art documentary films, usually relating to exhibitions currently on display.
The Lei Cheng Uk Museum, which is a site museum of a Han tomb discovered in 1955 and preserved in situ, came under the