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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
estimate figure of the daily visitors. It was estimated that the number of visitors per day for the Space Museum would be 1 400 while for the Science Museum, it would be 3 500, for the Arts Museum it would be 1 000 and for the Museum of History, it would be 1 500. I have also read the figures of 1994 to 1995 and found that the number of visitors per day for the different museums are as follows: 876 for the Space Museum, 1 519 for the Science Museum, 443 for the Museum of Art and 656 for the Museum of History. These figure tells us that the estimates of 1990 were not achieved and 6 years from 1990, the daily visitor figure is still less than half of the estimates made in 1990. This really is worthy of our consideration and evaluation in order to find out where the problem is. Why are so few people visiting our 4 museums which are all well equipped? Does the problem lie in our opening hours? Is it because what we display are not attractive enough? Can we have some professional advisory bodies giving us some objective comments so that we can improve our services? What I observe now is that we have never made any in-depth investigation into the problem.
At present, the 4 museums under the Urban Council have different opening hours. The opening hours of the Museum of Art and the Museum of History are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. while the Science Museum opens from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. I would like to propose here that the opening hours of the Museum of Art be extended two days a week, say for example, to 9 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This would tie in with the performances staged in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and other venues nearby, hence people can visit the Museum of Art before going to the Hong Kong Cultural Centre for performances. As regards the Science Museum, I propose that it can be opened earlier at 11a.m. on Sundays so that people can take their families there after having dim sum in restaurants. Moreover, it need not be opened until 9 p.m. It is hoped that people can visit our museums during different times.
Whilst extending the opening hours, I think we should also review the policy of admission charges. When we decided to charge an admission fee, we aimed to provide museum services of good quality at an admission charge which is affordable by the public. However, it is noted that there are not too many visitors and the charging of admission thus seemed meaningless. As a preliminary step, we can consider allowing free admission to students and people over 60. Moreover, concessionary fares can also be given to organisations so as to encourage them to organise such kind of large scale. activities and attract more students to visit our museums.
The setting-up of a user liaison group will provide the museums with an important channel for consultation. If we look at our performance facilities, we can see that very often forums for discussion with users are held by the Culture Select Committee to seek users' views on our facilities. We also keep in touch with our users through questionnaires and other surveying methods. By doing so, we can have more channels to understand our users' views. I think the museums can also adopt these methods. I believe that we can divide the