Hong Kong Heritage Museum taps artists' ideas to refresh old exhibitions

The exhibition "The Past is Continuing", currently running at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, could also be considered an attempt to revivify the often-neglected permanent collection housed in the city's youngest major museum.

More than a million visitors went to the Heritage Museum in its first year in 2000, lured to the out-of-the-way venue in Sha Tin to see famed collector Tsui Tsin-tong's donated Chinese antiques; a gallery dedicated to the works of Lingnan-style master Chao Shao-an; and the New Territories Heritage Hall with its life-size models and the sumptuous Cantonese opera hall.

Today, the museum is much more accessible thanks to the opening of the Che Kung Temple MTR station nearby, but it only attracted 636,000 people during the 2013-14 financial year. Those who did visit mostly went for the temporary blockbuster shows, such as the recent Dunhuang exhibition with replicas of grottoes; last year's fascinating history of chair designs; and the huge hit from Studio Ghibli in Japan. The permanent collections sit in silence, forgotten except by those seeking refuge from the hordes on the other floors.

Curator Lo Yan-yan was tasked with making these exhibits "relevant" - so often seen as the magic key for unlocking interest in an otherwise apathetic public. She arranged for 18 local artists and designers to visit the permanent halls and pick out exhibits that inspired them to create new works.

The result is as eclectic as the museum itself, and there are some delightfully silly moments.

Take, for example, the 20 or more slightly sinister-looking ceramic babies who pop up among the Chinese antique displays in the T. T. Tsui hall. Created by sculptor Johnson Tsang Cheung-shing, these babies are supposed to have escaped from a Ming-dynasty blue-and-white bowl with the classical "children at play" design, and they are raising havoc.