Asia Society Arts and Museum Network Launched At U.S.-China Forum On the Arts and Culture In Beijing
Contact: Elaine Merguerian, 212-327-9313
Beijing, November 15, 2012 — Fifteen museum directors from across the United States will meet with their counterparts at Chinese museums during the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture, November 15–17, 2012, in Beijing, which aims to advance cultural understanding between the United States and China.
The event marks the formal launch of the Asia Society Arts and Museum Network,a new five-year initiative of Asia Society designed to strengthen arts communities across Asia and encourage collaboration and exchange between art institutions and professionals in Asia and the United States. The initiative is the first effort of its kind, and will lead up to a major summit next October in Hong Kong, where Asia Society recently opened a new cultural center and exhibition space designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.
“There has been an enormous increase in the number of museums in China and there is a great desire on their part to build partnerships with American museums and understand more about how museums can become larger cultural centers in their communities,” says Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “The launch of the Arts and Museum Network at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture is the beginning of a series of conversations between museum directors in the United States and in Asia.”
Participants from the United States are: Stephen Allee, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), Maxwell Anderson, Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas), Neal Benezra, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), Melissa Chiu, Asia Society Museum (New York), Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Frye Art Museum (Seattle), Derek Gillman, Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Dorothy Kosinski, The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), Dan Monroe, Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA),
Jock Reynolds, Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven), Jennifer Russell, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Roxana Velasquez, The San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego), Olga Viso, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Adam Weinberg, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Jay Xu, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (San Francisco) and Julián Zugazagoitia, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City).
Chinese participants include: Mr. Bao Dongbo, Director, Hubei Museum, Mr. Bao Zewei, Director, Zhuhai Gu Yuan Arts Museum, Mr. Chen Jianning, Deputy Director, Guangdong Art Museum, Mr. Chen Xiejun, Director, Shanghai Museum, Mr. Cheng Jianzheng, Director, Shaanxi History Museum, Mr. Fan Di'an, Director, National Art Museum of China, Mr. Fan Feng, Director, Wuhan Art Museum, Mr. Gong Mingguang, Director, Shanghai Contemporary Arts Museum, Mr. Guo Xiaoling, Director, Capital Museum, Mr. Lu Zhangshen, Director, National Museum of China, Ms. Nan Nan, Deputy Director, Today's Art Museum, Ms. Shao Shan, Deputy Director, Guangdong Art Museum, Mr. Shan Jixiang, Director, The Palace Museum, Mr. Wang Huangsheng, Director, Art Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts, and Mr. Zhang Wenjun, Director, Henan Museum.
The Forum will open with a series of welcome events including a dinner hosted by U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in a series of discussions and preview an exciting new artistic collaboration between Pan Gongkai, artist and President of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, and American photographer Clifford Ross.
About Asia Society Museum
Asia Society Museum organizes groundbreaking exhibitions of traditional, modern and contemporary Asian and Asian American art. The Museum is known for its Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Collection of masterpiece-quality traditional Asian works and for its cutting-edge Contemporary Art Collection of videos and new media art by Asian and Asian American artists. The permanent collections are on occasional view.
Asia Society Museum was one of the first American museums to establish a program of contemporary Asian art in the early 1990s, and was the first U.S. museum to organize solo shows of now widely recognized artists Montien Boonma, Cai Guo-Qiang, Dinh Q. Lê, Yuken Teruya, and Zhang Huan.
The Museum is located on Park Avenue in New York City; its exhibitions are shown at Asia Society’s new cultural centers in Hong Kong and Houston, and in museums around the world.
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