ENG-1966 — Page 304

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RECREATION

Juilliard Quartet, Trio di Trieste, Ann Schein, Abbey Simon, Alfredo Campoli, Ruggiero Ricci, Yi-kwei Sze, Stefania Woytowicz, The Platters, The Searchers, Peter and Gordon, The Supremes, Xavier Cugat and The Windsor Theatre Royal Company.

Admission prices for concerts are said to be a major factor inhibiting a more rapid and general development of musical appre- ciation. The Urban Council, which administers 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. The City Hall Popular Concert series has been extremely well received. With admission fees at $1, most concerts were attended by capacity audiences.

The visual arts continued to flourish, and the opening of the ocean terminal saw the inauguration of several new commercial galleries, whose founding was followed by the closure of the Chatham Galleries which, during the four years of their existence, had con- tributed considerably to the promotion of public interest in the fine arts and had helped to establish a number of Hong Kong's young artists. The Tsi Ku Tsai, which used to organize exhibitions of Chinese paintings in the City Hall, has now opened a gallery of its own where old and contemporary Chinese paintings are exhibited.

Various art exhibitions, in the form of one-man shows or group exhibitions, were frequently held in the City Hall, which remains the centre for exhibitions of fine arts. The exhibits ranged from traditional and modern Chinese paintings and calligraphy to modern Western paintings and sculptures. The City Hall Exhibition Gallery has become a regular setting for annual exhibitions of local art societies and the fine arts departments of post-secondary colleges.

The City Hall Art Gallery itself sponsored three one-man exhibi- tions of works by local artists Julia Baron, Kwong Yeu-ting and Michael Griffith. Other exhibitions held there during the year included an exhibition of English domestic silver, loaned from the Victoria and Albert Museum, and an impressive exhibition of Chinese paintings and ceramics of the Ming period. The gallery also carried out its long-term programme of exhibition of works by Kwangtung artists, the artist exhibited this year being the 19th- Century painter Su Jen-shan.