ENG-1973 — Page 235

RECREATION

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sponsored by the council, gave 18 concerts in 1973 at the City Hall and intends to become fully professional in 1974.

The first international Hong Kong Arts Festival organised by the non-profit- making Hong Kong Arts Festival Society took place at the City Hall and the Lee Theatre in March 1973. Internationally known artists who performed at the festival included Margot Fonteyn, Yehudi Menuhin, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Seijo Ozawa conducting the New Japanese Philharmonic Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, and John Pritchard and Edo de Waart conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Also performing at the festival were the Bristol Old Vic, the London Gala Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet and the Royal Javanese Dancers.

They gave Hong Kong a complete month of music, drama and dance. Overall attendance at the City Hall concert hall and theatre exceeded 90 per cent of the seating capacity, of which some 15 per cent consisted of students. The event was so successful that the organisers have decided to present similar festivals in 1974 and 1975.

City Museum and Art Gallery

The City Museum and Art Gallery, situated on the upper floors of the High Block of the City Hall, is also administered by the Urban Council. Founded in 1962, it has built up collections of Chinese art and antiquities, historical pictures, ethno- graphical materials, archaeological finds, as well as local and contemporary art.

The collection of Chinese art and antiquities consists of paintings, calligraphy, rubbings, ceramics, bronze, jade, lacquerware, cloisonne and embroidery. The most comprehensive group in the collection is ceramics which includes some fine specimens and representative pieces of almost every period in Chinese history. Another notable group is the collection of Kwangtung paintings and calligraphy illustrating the development of Kwangtung art and culture in the last two centuries.

In the historical collections, there are more than 700 paintings, water-colours, drawings, lithographs and engravings, made up of the Chater, Hotung, Law and Sayer Collections as well as later acquisitions. Together, they provide a vivid pictorial record of Sino-British contacts in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These are further supplemented by about 2,000 old photographs which portray the dramatic progress of Hong Kong from 1870 to the present day.

Ethnological materials relating to Hong Kong's folk life continued to be collected and preserved. In co-operation with the Hong Kong Archaeological Society, frequent field trips to various archaeological sites in Hong Kong were made, resulting in fruitful excavations. The finds included Han and T'ang coins, bronzes, stone implements, bones, pots and numerous pot sherds.

The collection of local and contemporary art includes paintings, sculpture and prints by Hong Kong artists as well as prints by artists in other parts of Asia, in- cluding many of Chinese origin.

The permanent display in the museum section continued to show selected items of Chinese antiquities from the collection.