What type of museum does the Government desire?: The Orientation of Government Museums in Late-colonial Hong Kong

Abstract

After a twenty-year absence of museums in Hong Kong, the colonial government finally agreed to re-establish a public museum in the city in the early 1950s. The Urban Council, which took charge of its planning and management, soon faced a big question – “What type of museum does Government desire?” In other words, what should the museum collect and exhibit? This paper will examine the orientation of governmental public museums in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1980s and reveal the policies and considerations behind. My discussion will focus on the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery and its two successors, the Hong Kong Museum of History and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. In this paper, I argue that governmental public museums in late colonial Hong Kong embraced a local orientation in general. This direction began as a coincidence without much deliberation. Nevertheless, after the 1966 and 1967 riots, the colonial government and the Urban Council reinforced the local theme to foster a unique historical and cultural identity of Hong Kong people.