Page 84 of 126
144
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
only name known to us in the Visual Arts Column of the South China Morning Post. Thanks for his good work and dedication but for a healthy art community, it certainly needs more than just one voice. It is also known that art critics is not a well paid job and he has usually done his work on a semi-voluntary basis. This is also an area that policy makers should look at.
In association with the gradual expansion of the Museums, the new blood needed for recruiting curators and honorary advisors which require very strong artistic training and experience credentials and on localization basis (for curators only), could also gradually pose a problem.
The establishment of a more educated and sophisticated art community cannot be done overnight. It is a long term continuous fundamental art education process stretching from the primary education level to the tertiary level, with curriculums reviewed and replanned and more government funding to hire better qualified staff and to support associated activities. A central authority should be established to watch over the academic standard of the Fine Arts and Design courses of the Universities and the Polytechnics down to the Certificates courses in the Extra-Mural Studies to ensure a high standard of graduates produced for the public and as a first step to establish "Professionalism' in the Visual Arts. Professionalism should be introduced to the circles of visual artists by encouraging and supporting the artistic institutions originally established by the artists themselves but imposed with higher and stricter Rules of Ethics and Scale of Standard (for designers) and Negotiated (for painters and sculptors) Professional Charges. Art teachers should be made as reasonably well paid as teachers of any other science and humanistic subjects and put against a higher demand of qualifications or artistic creative performances. Their career prospects should be made open and secured with a clear future linkage to their respectable established professional membership.
The public should be taught how to learn both history and the visual arts through the appreciation of historic art works in the form of relics and antiquities. They should also be taught how to become a potential collector both as a hobby and as an investment against inflation. The fairy-tale that art collection belongs exclusively to the high society should no longer exist as participation of the grassroot could be made possible through art education.
The public should also be taught how to see things of the powerful and unexpected natural beauty in micro and macro visions as explored and exposed by the World of Science besides learning scientific principles, demonstrated in the Space and the Science Museums.
The public should also be taught how to look at untraditional modern art work with untraditional eyes. They should be trained how to give up the usual traditional criteria of appreciation and enter into the creative world of new expressions and philosophies of the modern artists and to widen their scope of visual experience.
Page 84 of 126
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 84 of 126
145
The public should also be taught to appreciate and understand the creative design concepts and fundamental principles of the famous school of BAUHUS in Germany in the 1920's which has been regarded as the 'Industrial Revolution' in aesthetics for modern living after and in response to the actual 19th Century Industrial Revolution. For near a century and up to the present day, its influence and impact on modern architecture, modern art and industrial design has been extremely profound. It educated both the manufacturers and the consumers. It created the modern markets for industrial and commercial design.
If Hong Kong is to engage in industrial product design of high quality with commercial package design of up-to-date market taste, this part of the visual art education should be more than essential. One should therefore not rule out entirely the possibility of establishing, depending on the priority and available resources, a separate Hong Kong Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts in the future, as it may demonstrate how the western visual arts had developed to influence modern life and modern art in the international scene and their influence on oriental artists and designers in our cultural region here... etc., which is for the moment very much lacking.
Having said all these, one may now conclude at least a view that municipal museum services can never be complete without the simultaneous support and demand of the right audience which should have been built up from both the artistic and industrial sectors of the community under a healthy Visual Arts Policy of the Central Government. Municipal museums should not be treated merely as places for leisurely visual pleasure and to give visits only at one's spare time. On the contrary, by virtue of their most comprehensive and concentrated collections and expert presentation, they should be places for high-level scientific research as well as for general comprehensive visual arts educations for which no one can afford to miss. They should be very special places where the citizens can enjoy and enrich their visual cultural life beyond space-time limitations and accordingly regular visits to them should form part of the active educational programmes of the families.
Lastly, but not the least, although as I have already said that museum development as a joint-effort of the Council and the Government over the past thirty years has been a tremendous success in terms of provision of modern premises and facilities, this is however true only to a good extent as even the original programme has not yet been fulfilled as demonstrated by the indefinite deferment of the long overdue construction of the permanent Museum of History whose reserved site next to the Science Museum has been lying idle for many years. The Government owes the public an explanation why the construction of the Main and Permanent Museum of History has to be indefinitely deferred and also why should there be certain degree of reluctance in funding the future Museum of Coastal Defence at Lynmum and the future Archaeological Centre at the Han-Tomb of Li-Cheng-Uk, both being branch museums of the Museum of History? The argument that funding priority
Page 84 of 126
Page 84 of 126
144
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
only name known to us in the Visual Arts Column of the South China Morning Post. Thanks for his good work and dedication but for a healthy art community, it certainly needs more than just one voice. It is also known that art critics is not a well paid job and he has usually done his work on a semi-voluntary basis. This is also an area that policy makers should look at.
In association with the gradual expansion of the Museums, the new blood needed for recruiting curators and honorary advisors which require very strong artistic training and experience credentials and on localization basis (for curators only), could also gradually pose a problem.
The establishment of a more educated and sophisticated art community cannot be done overnight. It is a long term continuous fundamental art education process stretching from the primary education level to the tertiary level, with curriculums reviewed and replanned and more government funding to hire better qualified staff and to support associated activities. A central authority should be established to watch over the academic standard of the Fine Arts and Design courses of the Universities and the Polytechnics down to the Certificates courses in the Extra-Mural Studies to ensure a high standard of graduates produced for the public and as a first step to establish "Professionalism' in the Visual Arts. Professionalism should be introduced to the circles of visual artists by encouraging and supporting the artistic institutions originally established by the artists themselves but imposed with higher and stricter Rules of Ethics and Scale of Standard (for designers) and Negotiated (for painters and scultors) Professional Charges. Art teachers should be made as reasonably well paid as teachers of any other science and humanistic subjects and put against a higher demand of qualifications or artistic creative performances. Their career prospects should be made open and secured with a clear future linkage to their respectable established professional membership.
The public should be taught how to learn both history and the visual arts through the appreciation of historic art works in the form of relics and antiquities. They should also be taught how to become a potential collector both as a hobby and as an investment against inflation. The fairy-tale that art collection belongs exclusively to the high society should no longer exist as participation of the grassroot could be made possible through art education.
The public should also be taught how to see things of the powerful and unexpected natural beauty in micro and macro visions as explored and exposed by the World of Science besides learning scientific principles, demonstrated in the Space and the Science Museums.
·
as
The public should also be taught how to look at untraditional modern art work with untraditional eyes. They should be trained how to give up the usual traditional criteria of appreciation and enter into the creative world of new expressions and philosophies of the modern artists and to widen their scope of visual experience.
Page 84 of 126
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 84 of 126
145
The public should also be taught to appreciate and understand the creative design concepts and fundamental principles of the famous school of BAUHUS in Germany in the 1920's which has been regarded as the 'Industrial Revolution' in aesthetics for modern living after and in response to the actual 19th Century Industrial Revolution. For near a century and up to the present day, its influence and impact on modern architecture, modern art and industrial design has been extremely profound. It educated both the manufacturers and the consumers. It created the modern markets for industrial and commercial design.
If Hong Kong is to engage in industrial product design of high quality with commercial package design of up-to-date market taste, this part of the visual art education should be more than essential. One should therefore not to rule out entirely the possibility of establishing, depending on the priority and available resources, a separate Hong Kong Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts in the future, as it may demonstrate how the western visual arts had developed to influence modern life and modern art in the international scene and their influence on oriental artists and designers in our cultural region here... etc., which is for the moment very much lacking.
Having said all these, one may now conclude at least a view that municipal museum services can never be complete without the simultaneous support and demand of the right audience which should have been built up from both the artistic and industrial sectors of the community under a healthy Visual Arts Policy of the Central Government. Municipal museums should not be treated merely as places for leisurely visual pleasure and to give visits only at one's spare time. On the contrary, by virtue of their most comprehensive and concentrated collections and expert presentation, they should be places for high-level scientific research as well as for general comprehensive visual arts educations for which no one can afford to miss. They should be very special places where the citizens can enjoy and enrich their visual cultural life beyond space-time limitations and accordingly regular visits to them should form part of the active educational programmes of the families.
Lastly, but not the least, although as I have already said that museum development as a joint-effort of the Council and the Government over the past thirty years has been a tremendous success in terms of provision of modern premises and facilities, this is however true only to a good extent as even the original programme has not yet been fulfilled as demonstrated by the indefinite deferment of the long overdue construction of the permanent Museum of History whose reserved site next to the Science Museum has been lying idle for many years. The Government owes the public an explanation why the construction of the Main and Permanent Museum of History has to be indefinitely deferred and also why should there be certain degree of reluctance in funding the future Museum of Coastal Defence at Lynmum and the future Archaeological Centre at the Han-Tomb of Li-Cheng-Uk, both being branch museums of the Museum of History? The argument that funding priority
Page 84 of 126
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.