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MR. PAUL YOUNG TZE-KONG (in English):--Mr. Chairman, first of all thank you for your compliment earlier. During the year the Working Party on Leisure Pools studied the schedule of accommodations and the presented total cost estimate of HK$340 millions for both the Hammer Hill and the Jordan Valley Leisure Pools Complexes. As the present Chairman and with the support of colleagues on this working party, I took the initiative to review the schedule. The objective was to have the cost estimates substantially reduced while maintaining the essentials of the original schedule, quality and date of completion. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Council for their recent acceptance and approval of the outcome of the review—a reduced total cost estimate of HK$206 millions. The estimated saving of HK$134 millions shows this financially autonomous Council exercised care in their spending. Also, special thanks and appreciations go to the relevant hardworking officers of the Urban Services Department, the Architectural Services Department, the Drainage Services Department, and the Water Supplies Department throughout the few short months they were given for the above exercise. This review in the use of resources where the spirit of cooperation and coordination between the Council and the various government departments is exemplary. This Council's efforts to serve and enrich public life in the 90's while meeting their ever-increasing demands caused by political changes and a highly inflated economy since the 80's will require a comprehensive review of the aims and role which I indicated in my previous speeches a few years ago. As a concluding thought, I would like to ask a question: Has this 110 years old Urban Council been value for money?
With these words, Mr. Chairman, I support the motion.
CHAIRMAN (in English):--The next speaker is Jason YUEN.
MR. JASON YUEN KING-YUK (in English):--Mr. Chairman, as Chairman of the Museum Select Committee, I wish to present some of my views on the subject of 'The Visual Arts Policy and the Municipal Museums'.
Much has been said about the lack of a Central Cultural Policy of the Government and the need for the creation of a Cultural Constituency in the near future. I would personally render my support to urge the Government to establish the long-overdue Central Comprehensive Cultural Policy without further delay as it affects the quality of cultural life of citizens as well as the municipal museum works. This policy establishment should, however, be done independently without waiting for the political outcome of whether or not there should be a Cultural Constituency. In fact, this policy establishment may even assist to delineate the boundaries of the various artistic circles and to identify some of their complex problems, with or without solutions, as a suitable functional constituency for consideration.
The Central Cultural Policy should consist of at least 3 major elements, namely, the Performing Arts Policy, the Visual Arts Policy, and the Literary Arts Policy. With the limited time today, I would choose to talk on the Visual Arts Policy only as it may affect directly or indirectly the general development and management of the Council's museums.
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Arts Policy only as it may affect directly or indirectly the general development and management of the Council's museums.
Let us quickly look at some social phenomena before I proceed with the discussion further:
For many years up to now in Hong Kong, parents do not encourage or support their children to take up the visual arts or sports as their future career because they don't believe that art-teachers, sports-masters, or freelance artists can make enough money to comfortably support their families. The only exception might be architecture, but still being rated the lowest priority when comparing with the other choices such as being medical doctors, lawyers, or accountants. In some corners of this money-minded society, painters have even been sometimes quietly being unfairly seen as 'gentleman-beggars' (É).
Appreciation and collection of art treasures in historical relics and antiquities have been viewed as only an exclusively luxury exercise of the wealthy and knowledgeable collectors of the high society by the grassroots people. Non-humanistic and avant-garde approaches of the western-styled modern or contemporary arts have been received either superficially by our own artists as the creator or with confusion and skepticism by the general public as the audience. While it becomes common sense in daily life to talk about Picasso and Henry Moore in many foreign countries, it may induce a degree of resentment to some people here as being too pedantic in talking about them as understandably the general appreciation of Picasso and Henry Moore is not so widespread as in those places.
All these above-mentioned social attitudes reflect nothing but a complete lack of comprehensive art education in the society, and it should be a challenge for the policy-makers to revert them. Although museum development over the past thirty years, as a joint effort of the Council and the Government, and as a result of the hard work of the Urban Services Department and some former Councillors in particular, has witnessed tremendous progress and has proved to be a great success in terms of provision of modern premises facilities and diversification of contents, the correspondingly educated and sophisticated art community of the general public to support them has, however, disappointingly been neglected to build up.
Our Museum of Arts, through its Biennial Competitions and Exhibitions and the Hong Kong Artist Series Exhibitions, has been promoting the local artistic climate and supporting local artists of status. The Museum of History, likewise, though on a lesser scale, has also been producing the museum's own amateurish archaeologists and research-workers. But we have found that the anticipated genuine audience from the public is still not adequate, as we have after been seeing the same old faces of the limited artistic or antiquarian circles during the previews of exhibitions, seminars, or similar museum extension activities.
Art critics are almost non-existent. We have far too many political critics, but only one in the field of the Visual Arts. For years, Mr. Nigel CAMERON is the
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