MIDDLEBURGH

Kulture

Just so that we all understand...

Hong Kong is not (completely) a cultural wilderness... and I do occasionally visit theatre, museums and art galleries as well as the cinema...

On Wednesday I visited the Hong Kong Museum of Art. It is the "Year of France in China" and an exhibition of impressionist paintings from the French National collection doing the rounds has just arrived in Hong Kong after rave reviews from Beijing and Shanghai

Of course under "the one country two systems" policy it has been greeted with relative indifference here, so much so that unfavorable comments were made in the press last week about the poor turnout. Apparently more people went to a recent Picasso exhibition and after all who was he!!

The reality is that the Picasso exhibition was conveniently held in down Central on Hong Kong Island in the IFC as a one off where as the Art Museum is in Kowloon (this is not to infer that the masses in Kowloon are less cultured than the plebes on Hong Kong Island - and rumors that they eat their babies over there are totally without foundation)

No doubt spurred by the implied criticisms that citizens were not doing their patriotic duty and showing fraternal kinship of the Chinese to the French people, there was however a significant turn out on Wednesday.

A cynic did however point out to me three alternative and plausible reasons

1. Hong Kongers wanted to show the Shanghainese who was the more cultured
2. On Chinese new year it was some thing to do/somewhere to go
3. and on a Wednesday the entrance fee to the museum is a third cheaper

Bottom line was that the exhibition was a treat if somewhat noisy: There are proximity alarms on all the paintings, which went off every time someone leaned too close. The security guards must be looking forward to the exhibition ending

Posted at 2/11/2005 11:42:00 am by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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