Tech tonic

"It's not the fault of new media that something is trivial," Shaw opines. "It's the fault of the maker in failing to bring complexity, meaning or depth of experience to the work. There's no contradiction between play, enjoyment and engagement versus education. It's quite the opposite: The educational impact is amplified (because of these elements)."

"Art historians can look at paintings and understand what exactly it's saying. For the general public who's not trained in that narrative, all they see, for instance, is a small jade horse with wings. They don't see a magical flying creature."

Meanwhile, curator Cheng feels she can live with the criticism that entertainment prevails over education in HKPM's Gallery 7. She feels she has succeeded in giving visitors something they can engage with, and that alone is hugely satisfying.

Since the museum opened to the public on July 3, Cheng has come across both thoughtful, inquisitive visitors who ask what a gallery with interiors resembling that of a science museum might be doing inside HKPM as well as those who just take photos and leave.

She notes that the objects on show in most other galleries of the museum "are contained in a box", and unless parents take care to explain the contexts to their children, "it could be quite boring" for them. But in Gallery 7, "children run around, jump and touch," activities that take their experience to a whole different level.