'That's what you get for assigning construction contracts to the lowest tender,' says chief curator Joseph Ting Sun-pau. It's been seven years since the museum was completed, but Ting is still visibly frustrated about such defects - especially when he's trying to show someone the museum's centrepiece.

He blames the shoddy work on a decision to choose builders solely based on money, as well as the inability to extend opening hours and, therefore, paying workers to do night shifts.

Ting's admissions of his struggles in finessing the museum's operations hardly match the celebratory atmosphere that marked the Museum of History's 30th anniversary this year. Bureaucratic inflexibility has brought about more than leaky ceilings, however. As the public faces an onslaught of leisure options in the city, visitor numbers at the government's premier cultural institutions are in danger of slowly dripping away.

Along with the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Ting's institution is the oldest of its kind in Hong Kong. Both centres were officially established in July 1975, the result of a separation of services provided by the then 13-year-old Hong Kong Art Gallery and Museum. The two institutions, once the leading lights among local public museums, are being eclipsed by newer attractions.

Of the five major public museums in Hong Kong, the museums of History and Art came bottom in recent attendance figures. In the year to last month, the two museums attracted 703,387 and 526,590 visitors, respectively, compared with 817,501 for the Hong Kong Science Museum (established in 1980), 807,480 for the Hong Kong Space Museum (1991) and 750,323 for the Hong Kong Heritage Museum (2000).

Ting could take heart from the fact that the Museum of History has always been regarded as a more academic institution than its scientific counterparts. The latter have a wealth of interactive games for visitors of all ages. Not that the figures don't bother Ting. 'If I'm working for a museum in a university, then I could focus on projects that are critically well-received but commercially underwhelming,' he says. 'As long as my patrons there like it we don't have to concern ourselves with what the general public think. But as public institutions we just can't be like that. Attendance is something we regard as very important, too.'

Ting - who joined the government's museum services in 1977 and arrived at the Museum of History in 1988 - is dismayed when asked about exhibitions that he loved but which failed to ignite the public's interest. 'There's the exhibition we organised about the Dian kingdom,' he says, referring to Hunting and Rituals, a display of relics from the kingdom that thrived more than 2,000 years ago in what's now Yunnan.

'Researchers told me the exhibits are things that they might not even get to see back in Yunnan because they'll all be under lock and key in warehouses,' says Ting. 'The show was praised within academic circles and among art collectors. The attendance, however, hit new lows in the history of the museum - only about 30,000 people visited the exhibition during its three-month tenure here.'

By comparison, the likes of War and Peace, a 2002 exhibition of historical artefacts from the Qin and Han dynasties, was a huge success. 'Nearly 240,000 people visited that exhibition in three months - the show with the highest attendance rate in the museum's history,' he says. 'It was because of the terracotta soldiers on show. Everybody knows them and people feel they have to see them by themselves. Hongkongers are like this - they admire brand names and it's only when you have something like this in your exhibition that you can muster a selling point for the show.'

Ting says gimmicks are needed for big draws in museums. So, what would guarantee a blockbuster exhibition A display of haam yu, or 'salted fish' - Cantonese slang for dead bodies. 'Hongkongers are like that,' he says. 'They wouldn't want to miss out.' Ting says this mindset worked wonders for the Museum of Art's recent three-month exhibition of French impressionist paintings, for which almost 270,000 visitors queued for hours to get tickets.

'As a public museum our promotional activities should never touch on the sensational - the publicity work we do can never be compared to, say, Walt Disney stuff.'

The comparison couldn't be more timely and apt. The soon-to-open Disneyland will be the toughest competition museums in Hong Kong have faced. Ting refuses to be drawn on whether he sees Disneyland as a competitor for hearts and minds, saying it differs from museums because 'it's a place purely for entertainment'.

Not that publicity stunts and entertainment don't figure in the government's marketing strategies for its museums. They're now described as moving 'beyond socio-educational functions to become a place for leisure and entertainment' in the Museum Guidebook that the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) published to mark this weekend's International Museum Day.

The government's aim to attract larger audiences for museums can be seen in the playful activities being held to celebrate the event. At Museum Panorama at the Heritage Museum, there'll be booths staffed by representatives of 18 museums and cultural institutions from Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. A feature will be a so-called interactive zone of workshops and martial arts programmes, in addition to talks about Chinese medicine and architecture. Visitors will also be given an International Museum Day game card, and enthusiasts will be rewarded with a souvenir watch (while stocks last, says the LCSD) if they collect 18 stamps with visits to all the participating museums.

The promotion is in keeping with attempts by public museums to attract more people. An interactive theatre piece charting the rise and fall of two families during Hong Kong's post-war years was performed last month at the Museum of History. The production signified the museum's willingness to reposition its role as partly the provider of family entertainment.

Detractors will label such acts as dumbing down, but attendance figures speak for themselves. According to the LCSD, overall visitor figures for all its 12 museums and the Hong Kong Film Archive last year fell to 4.57 million, from 5.03 million in 2002 - despite the government's persistence in free access on Wednesdays and low entrance fees on other days of the week (from $10 for most institutions to $25 for the Science Museum).

While the science-related museums, boosted by a continuous stream of school tours all year round, continue their success, the Museum of Art is in a precarious position. If not for the Impressionism exhibition, its attendance rate for the past 12 months would be a third of the Science Museum's. It attracted just 271,400 visitors last year, compared with the Science Museum's 853,830. Even the Railway Museum in Tai Po had 388,510 visitors last year.

'Audience-building takes time - and it's important to note the gradient on which a museum rises in this aspect,' says Christina Chu Kam-luen, chief curator of the Museum of Art. But statistics aren't the whole story, she says. 'Although we're also in pursuit of market saturation, we can't just cater for the lowest common denominator.'

The startling success of the Impressionism exhibition, however, didn't surprise Chu. 'Impressionist paintings will never fail in attracting audiences, because everyone can easily understand the work - the vivid colours and the festive atmosphere.'

The art historian turned administrator-cum-curator says the need to connect with people needn't be synonymous with playing safe and treading populist paths. Although most of the museum's displays focus on more traditional art forms such as Chinese ink painting, glassware and jade jewellery, Chu was instrumental in opening up the museum to a more contemporary agenda.

The Art of Giving, which opens today, is a display of challenging and modern works from the museum's collection. Of disparate form and aesthetics, they range from Xu Bing's visually exciting The Book of Heaven, an installation that challenges the authority of language through its vast scrolls printed with fictitious Chinese characters, to Agenda No1, Freeman Lau Siu-hong's set of connectable chairs.

Chu's plans for moving the museum forward, however, come hand in hand with the need to bring people into the museum.

Museum Panorama, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 1 Man Lam Road, Sha Tin, today and tomorrow, 10am-6pm. Inquiries: 2180 8188; The Art of Giving, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui. Ends Oct 30. Inquiries: 2721 0116