WKCDA announces the completion of Public Consultation for Hong Kong Palace Museum

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) announced today the completion of its eight-week public consultation on the Hong Kong Palace Museum project.


Launched on 11 January and completed on 8 March, the public consultation exercise aimed to collect public views on the Hong Kong Palace Museum project and in particular its design, programming, learning and interpretation opportunities. Targeting the general public, the exhibition held at City Gallery received 22,244 visitors and its online version registered 22,640 page views. 1,575 completed questionnaires have been received at the exhibition venue and online while 58 submissions have been received by post or via email.  In order to reach out to more members of the community, WKCDA also conducted a territory-wide public opinion poll in which 1,805 people were interviewed at random on the street across the 18 Districts from 28 February 2017 to 7 March 2017.


WKCDA’s Consultation Panel is an important channel for gathering public opinion. During the consultation period, two special meetings of the Consultation Panel were held to gauge the views of the panel members on the Hong Kong Palace Museum project. The WKCDA also organised five consultation sessions with relevant stakeholders including architects and related professions, the arts and culture sector, as well as arts and culture-related committees of the District Councils to listen to their comments and advice.  Apart from the above meetings and the consultation sessions, the WKCDA also participated in panel discussions, talks, and task force meetings organised by local professional groups, professional institutions, the Task Force on Harbourfront Developments in Kowloon, Tsuen Wan and Kwai Tsing of the Harbourfront Commission as well as a youth group.


“The WKCDA is very pleased that there has been a good response to this consultation exercise from the community.  This public consultation exercise has not only helped the WKCDA to communicate our vision for the development of the whole District, but also allowed the general public to be engaged in this unprecedented project.  All comments received during the consultation exercise will be analysed to assist the WKCDA Board to decide on the way forward on the proposed development of the Hong Kong Palace Museum for the betterment of the city and enrichment of its art and cultural life,” said Mr Pescod.


The results of the analysis of feedback gathered through this eight-week public consultation exercise, together with all of the comments and submissions received during the consultation period, will be reported to the WKCDA Board for consideration.


Remarks

About West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and M+, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.


About The Palace Museum 
Situated in the very heart of Beijing, the Palace Museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its vast holding of over 1.8 million artefacts including paintings, ceramics, calligraphy, and antiquities belonging to the imperial collections. The Palace Museum houses many nationally protected valuable cultural objects, but due to its huge scale only a small fraction (0.6%) of this extraordinary collection is able to be displayed to the public at any given time.


The collection includes over 367,000 ceramics, over 180,000 textile pieces, 53,000 paintings, 75,000 calligraphy, 19,000 lacquer items and over 23,000 jade objects. In 2016 the Palace Museum attracted a record of 16 million visitors.


Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department has presented a number of exhibitions which display the rich diversity of the Palace Museum’s collection. The four thematic exhibitions held since 2012 have been extremely popular attracting over a total of some 430,000 visitors.