Salisbury Rd Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 10am-6pm. $10, Wed free. The Museum of Art houses six galleries of mostly classical Chinese paintings, ceramics and historical artefacts, though not much effort has been made to place them in any context. The Xubaizhai Gallery of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy features examples of superb penmanship (in Chinese calligraphy, it’s the spirit of the brush-strokes which is most admired) and some quirky scroll paintings such as Jin Nong’s podgy Lone Horse (1761). Next door, the Contemporary Art Gallery hosts post-1950s work, including silkscreen painting, calligraphy, ceramics, and paintings by Hong Kong artists in both Western and Chinese styles.

The high point of the third floor section on Chinese Antiquities is the display of Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) ceramics, from a period when an unparalleled level of interaction between China and the outside world fuelled great artistic innovations. In particular, the Tang tomb figures, streaked green and brown, show very “foreign” features in the characters’ big noses and beards. These all complement the Chinese Decorative Arts Gallery, whose costumes, embroidery and textiles are outstanding. The Historical Pictures Gallery is of interest for contemporary illustrations by both Western and Chinese artists tracing the eighteenth and nineteenth-century development of Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou (in China). The final fourth floor Chinese Fine Art Gallery shows selections from three thousand works, including modern Chinese art and animal and bird paintings.