ENG-1965 — Page 278

RECREATION

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Local impresarios have continued to make a valuable contribution to the cultural life of Hong Kong. During the year they brought in 40 overseas artists or groups for a total of 71 performances. These included such well-known names as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, The Sydney Symphony Orchestra, The Yale University Glee Club Choir, Ballet Africaine, Emlyn Williams and the New Shakespeare Company.

Admission prices for concerts are said to be a major factor inhibiting a more rapid and general development of musical ap- preciation. The management of the City Hall has offered what appears to be a successful partial solution to this problem by presenting local artists at low admission prices with carefully selected programmes appealing to both the novice and the expert. These concerts, including the Sunday Afternoon Concerts presented in conjunction with Radio Hong Kong, and the new City Hall Popular Concerts series have been extremely well received. The admission fee has been kept at $1 and for most concerts the tickets were sold out within three or four days of being placed on sale.

The public's interest in fine art was sustained throughout the year both by exhibitions of all kinds and by a new and welcome development on the part of local companies, hotels, airlines and manufacturers who gave commissions to several local artists. These commissions resulted in an improvement in graphic art as well as in murals and decorations which now enhance many of Hong Kong's new buildings. In the City Hall Art Gallery, paintings of the 19th-Century dominated the year's programme with exhibitions of the work of the Cantonese artist Su Liu-peng and the English painter George Chinnery. The City Hall staff extended their activi- ties by sending the work of the Hong Kong sculptor Cheung Yee for exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute in London, and by making arrangements for a Hong Kong contribution to the Com- monwealth Arts Festival.

GOVERNMENT COLLECTIONS

The City Hall also houses important reference collections and a lending and reference library. The government collections of pic- torial material consist of the Ho Tung Collection, the Chater Collection, and the Law and Sayer Collections. They contain more