<p style="text-align: justify;">The Hong Kong Museum of Art invited Prof. Tong Kam-tang to produce demonstration videos on ink, colour and texture strokes commonly used in Chinese landscape paintings for the “Mastering Masterpieces: The Essentials of Chinese Landscape Paintings” exhibition.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">Appreciating Chinese painting and calligraphy can be a frustratingly clueless task. Luckily, Tang Hou, a Yuan connoisseur, offered to help with this advice: "In the case of landscapes or paintings of bamboo, plum blossoms, orchids, old trees, rocks, birds and flowers, they are ink-plays in which the initiated and cultured lodge their thoughts and feelings. Pray not to gauge them for formal likeness." In other words, if you are looking only for formal likeness, you are looking in the wrong direction. What is more, when you look at the brush and ink, you look at the artist. Withdrawal means attaining an ideal realm of existence while avowal, proclaiming one's conviction unequivocally. The proclamation, however, requires neither sound nor words when the medium is painting or calligraphy. When appreciating these works, it is the sincerity and integrity embodied that we should look for.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">To showcase the manifestation of literati integrity in painting and calligraphy, 60 masterpieces have been selected from the Chih Lo Lou Collection and other Museum holdings for display with reference to their subjects, techniques and the artists' style names and courtesy names.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">Commemorating its 60th anniversary in 2021, the Min Chiu Society, formed by a group of art collectors in Hong Kong, has been an important cultural force devoted to fostering intellectual exchange and collecting, studying and promoting Chinese art. Guided by its founding ethos––"an earnest pursuit of classic knowledge, with a passion for antiquity"––the Society's art collections are eclectic, ranging from Chinese paintings and calligraphy, ceramics, jade, glass, lacquer wares, carvings in bamboo and wood, furniture, textiles as well as China Trade arts. This exhibition presented the very best of Chinese art from the collections of Society members. Over 300 works of art were featured, bringing the artistic and cultural taste of Chinese imperial courts and literati across generations.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">Art is an important life experience during child development. According to psychologist Howard Gardner, art education can open up multiple intelligences in children and lay solid groundwork for holistic development.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">"Little Heads · Big Discovery" is a series of parent-child art enlightenment resources for children aged 2 - 6. Parents and children are invited to enter the vibrant and multifarious world of art through entertaining ways of learning from these alphabet cards and resources. Children could explore artworks of various times, styles and materials in the museum collections. This unique set of resources also cultivates concentration, aesthetic judgment, exploration, comprehension and expression, all important building blocks of multiple intelligences for the little brains. Indeed, all are welcome to try this novel art journey and experience diverse art from a whole new angle.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">These 4 animations of “Jockey Club Education Programmes: A Chinese Scholar's Studio Tour” Online Resources inspire audiences to expand imagination and appreciation of Chinese landscape painting, ceramics, jade-carving and sericulture from a whole new perspective.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">The Hong Kong Museum of Art has developed an art education programme in partnership with the Design and Cultural Studies Workshop for the appreciation of the art of Chinese painting and calligraphy. By means of animated images, this project will feature and interpret some of the fundamental ideas or subject matters of Chinese art in a simple and vivid approach.</p>