The Hong Kong Museum of History (Chinese: 香港歷史博物館; Mandarin Pinyin: Xiānggǎng Lìshǐ Bówùguǎn; Jyutping: Hoeng1 Gong2 Lik6 Si2 Bok3 Mat6 Gun2) is a museum which preserves Hong Kong's historical and cultural heritage. It is located next to the Hong Kong Science Museum.
The museum was established by the Urban Council in July 1975 when the City Museum and Art Gallery was split into the Hong Kong Museum of History and Hong Kong Museum of Art; some of the Museum of History's collections were on display at the City Museum and Art Gallery's original 1962 location at the City Hall.
In 1983, the Museum was moved to a temporary location (which now houses Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre) in Kowloon Park. It was moved to its present premises near Hong Kong Science Museum on Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui in 1998. It is currently managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of Hong Kong Government.
The collections of the museum encompass the following fields: natural history, archaeology, ethnography and local history.
The museum runs three branch museums: Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence at Shau Kei Wan, Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum at Sham Shui Po, and Law Uk Folk Museum at Chai Wan.
Famous quotes containing the words museum and/or history:
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)