Students at New York City's Columbia University have been protesting the proposed placement of a large Henry Moore bronze outside the library. A petition against it sports 1,000 signatures. An editorial in the school paper, in what presumably is supposed to pass for wit rather than art criticism, calls the sculpture an "ugly hunk of metal", "an idealization of a chewed wad of gum", "a dying mantis or a poorly formed pterodactyl".

So much for a liberal arts education. If Columbia University doesn't want it, then perhaps they'll let us have it. I am sure we can find somewhere nice for it, perhaps in the West Kowloon Cultural District. So, Columbia, please get in touch.

With all due respect to Art Basel and other aspects of the contemporary (and commercial) Asian art scene, in which Hong Kong may or may not be playing a role that ultimately proves significant, we could do with some iconic works on permanent display. Every other world city, and even some pretty pokey towns, have an iconic work of art, something locals and tourists go out of their way to see. One knows that a piece of art has reached iconic status when it appears on postcards, dish towels and refrigerator magnets.

This is the sort of artwork that children will tell their parents about when they return home after a school trip, that visitors will vie to take selfies with, that people hold in some affection. Hong Kong people feel that way about many things - the harbor, egg tarts, the trams - but not art, at least not yet.

Iconic art doesn't need to be classical, nor even representational. It doesn't even necessarily need to be great art or very old: Make Way for Ducklings in the Boston Public Gardens is only 30 years old. Nor, of course, does it need to be Western. But art that becomes iconic is usually public and accessible. I am skeptical that M+, as yet more an aspiration than an actual museum, will ever provide this. I know this sounds old fogeyish, but it helps to have a firm and stable surface before one starts wielding something with a cutting edge.

There is lots of art in the basements of the world's great museums - or even, as we now learn, in storage at universities whose students don't want it. They don't have enough space to display it all - art, that is, without viewers. Meanwhile Hong Kong has millions of viewers without art. Hong Kong, in this respect as in so many others, provides a gateway to the Chinese mainland: A place that is secure, where the infrastructure works, where museums and art can be - and are - tied into school curricula, where the man and woman in the street are relatively sophisticated and culturally open-minded. Art is to be seen; that's its purpose. It does no one any good being kept out of sight.

Simple is often better and some people in town, including some in the government, get it. Last week, the Sheung Wan Civic Centre Theatre was filled four times in two days for local students to see, and hear, an abridged 90-minute version of the opera Carmen. A mustachioed narrator engaged in interactive banter with the audience, who laughed and gasped and, in the end, cheered through several curtain calls. There was a certain amount of quiet humming along during Toreador Song.

This was an entirely professional production, featuring attractive sets, an orchestra and chorus and some of Hong Kong's best local singers; mezzo-soprano Carol Lin was alternately coquettish, dramatic and cutting in the title role. Adults, had they found out about it, might have felt somewhat put out that there were no evening performances.

This small piece of magic - secondary students sitting through 90 minutes of opera - was the result of efforts from local company Musica Viva with, one imagines, financial support from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. There are far worse things for the government to spend money on. The production focused on the musical and dramatic highlights - gypsy dances, knife fights and stabbings - and, interestingly in this politically correct age, treated the students with some intellectual respect as the adults they will soon be: The direction included both Carmen's rather violent demise and smoking on stage. Whatever role exams play in the lives of these students, they haven't snuffed out their ability to appreciate - and thoroughly - art when it is presented to them rather than at them.

An ancient Greek vase, Egyptian mummy or impressionist painting in a new museum would be nice - and worth aspiring to - but entirely local efforts can give young people access to the arts and local artists a chance to engage audiences. One performance of Carmen, like one swallow, does not a summer make, but it's a good, and eminently achievable, start.

(HK Edition 04/26/2016 page8)