Stand by for a cultural comeback

Some good news for the whole community: the leisure and cultural services department is reopening many of its recreational and cultural venues following the Covid-19 shutdown.

This includes many outdoor and indoor locations like beaches and sports halls and - from tomorrow - swimming pools. It also covers many public libraries.

Performance venues are likely to be closed for another week or two, though of course many planned musical and other events had to be canceled anyway.

Thirteen museums have also now reopened, notably the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the Hong Kong Museum of History, though hours and the number of visitors allowed are limited as a health precaution.

Visitors will have to pick up a first-come-first-served admission slip for a specific two-hour session.

Check the LCSD website at https://www.lcsd.gov.hk/en/ for details.

Despite these restrictions this is the first and long-awaited opportunity for many people to visit the superbly refurbished Hong Kong Museum of Art since it reopened in November.

Unfortunately, unless you already have a ticket you will not be able to see A Sense of Place: from Turner to Hockney before it closes on May 27.

But other exhibitions are open again, including The Wisdom of Emptiness: Selected Works from the Xubaizhai Collection (until June 30), The Best of Both Worlds: Acquisitions and Donations of Chinese Antiquities (until August 26), Lost and Found: Guardians of the Chater Collection (until September 19) and a couple of very interesting locally oriented shows.

Bernard Charnwut Chan is chairman of Tai Kwun Cultural & Arts Co Ltd.

standard@bernardchan.com