ENG-1991 — Page 384

RECREATION, SPORTS AND THE ARTS

The fund has awarded 121 grants and six scholarships totalling $1,411,000 this year, enabling young people to study music and dance abroad, and assisting local schools and organisations to acquire musical instruments and dance equipment.

Museums

Hong Kong Museum of Art

The year 1991 was a memorable year for the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Construction of the new museum at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre at Tsim Sha Tsui was completed and it was opened officially in November.

While staff were busy preparing for the opening of the new musuem, activities in the old museum at City Hall carried on until the beginning of September. During this period the Museum of Art presented four exhibitions on Chinese fine arts, Chinese antiquities, historical pictures and three exhibitions on tea ware at its branch museum, the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware. They attracted 684 000 visitors and 75 school parties with 4 700 students.

Among the exhibitions presented were, Modern Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Taiyilou Collection; Selected Treasures of Chinese Art Min Chiu Society 30th Anniversary Exhibition; Earth and Fire - Ceramics Donated by the Museum of Chinese History, Beijing, and Glimpses of China: Trades in 19th Century China Trade Paintings.

The Museum of Tea Ware continued its semi-permanent exhibition of Chinese Tea Drinking. An exhibition entitled Tea Cargo and other Treasures from the Swedish East-Indiaman Gotheborg was jointly presented by the Urban Council and the Consulate General of Sweden. Chinese Ceramic Tea Vessels: The K. S. Lo Collection was organised from the museum collection and toured major cities in the United States and Canada in order to cultivate international interest in Yixing Pottery.

During the year, the Urban Council continued to receive donations from generous donors. A collection of 43 items of bamboo carvings was received by the Musuem of Art. A collection of six oils and 14 watercolours by Wong Siu-ling, and 40 pieces of Chinese painting and calligraphy by Xie Liqing, were also donated to the museum.

To develop the role of the museum as a visual art education centre, various educational and extension activities were organised. These included art lectures, demonstrations, gallery talks, art videos and small-scale travelling exhibitions.

The museum's Art Sale Service helped promote local art and artists by selling works of art in different media to the public.

The new Museum of Art marked the final completion of the Cultural Centre. The new museum has four storeys and total exhibition gallery space of 5 800 square metres. The permanent galleries featured selected items from the museum collection on a rotation basis. The special exhibition gallery of 1 400 square metres was devoted to the staging of major loan exhibitions of international standard on Chinese and western art. The inaugural exhibition was Too French - Contemporary French Art jointly presented by the Urban Council and the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. The display featured about 100 works from over 20 artists active in France in the last 40 years.

Hong Kong Space Museum

An exhibit renewal programme costing $20 million was completed in July 1991. The museum's Hall of Astronomy and Hall of Space Science are currently displaying over

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