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Arts policy should be dictated by 'professionals, not the people'

Art is created for the people, but decisions about art should be made by professionals instead of through a democratic process, Arts Centre chairwoman Cissy Pao Watari says.

Repeated public consultations about the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District might not be worthwhile, she said. 'There are a lot of consultations the government has been doing and will be doing, and sometimes it gets too repetitious. You will never get a consensus to do the right thing for the people. I don't think art is a democratic concept.'

She said such world cultural leaders as New York and London were created on foundations of business and art, not through democratic processes. Examples of the same process were some of the world's best-known museums, such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

Arts Centre executive director Connie Lam Suk-yee said the authorities had to learn to leave the job to professionals. 'You can't ask everyone, but you just have to believe in those doing the job and their professionalism.'

Ms Watari, a former chairwoman of the Hong Kong Ballet, said the authorities should work closely with cultural institutes and arts groups.

'It's a wrong attitude to think that artists do not know how to realise practical things,' she said. 'But sometimes it's interesting talking to artists because they have interesting ideas. They are the ones who sniff out the best places, if you look at SoHo [in New York] and 798 [an art district in Beijing]. They are the ones who find opportunities, and [the authorities] need artists to give them fresh ideas.'

She said she hoped cultural groups would be allowed to play an important role in the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District, because they 'make the cultural district, not the buildings'.

The government, at the same time, should offer more recognition to arts institutes, she said, even if that just amounted to government representatives attending event openings.

Ms Watari, a daughter of Worldwide Shipping Group founder Pao Yue-kong, admitted that the culture of art donations in Hong Kong had room to improve.

She said most tycoons in Hong Kong lived hard lives and were not educated about the importance of art. But with the rise of a younger generation of tycoons, many of whom had studied abroad and been exposed to the arts, the situation could change, she said, and the government should offer tax incentives to encourage contributions to the arts.

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