Page 25 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

Painting and Calligraphy, Shanghai Museum;
Christina Chu, Curator, Xubaizhai, The Hong
Kong Museum of Art; Xue Yongnian, Professor
of Art History, Central Academy of Fine Arts,
Beijing; May-ching Kao, Professor of Fine Arts
and Director, Art Museum, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong; and Joan Lebold
Cohen, critic and author.
While one great achievement of China: 5,oooYears
is to place the traditional and the modern into
adjacent contexts, they remain two distinct
—stories one a reexamination of classical, dynastic
Chinese art in terms of its innovative and
transgressive tendencies; the other an account of
modern Chinese art as a reflection of political
history and in terms of its attempt to sustain both
classical and Western cultural vocabularies. Together
they make a third story: five thousand years of con-
tinuous cultural history in China that continues to
the present day.
The sheer scope of such an exhibition enterprise is,
of course, ambitious, and it carries with it many
challenges and contradictions. In its very title,
China: 5,000 Years poses many questions: Can any
single exhibition legitimately explore five
thousand years of any culture, let alone one as rich
as this? Does it make sense to link twentieth-
century Chinese culture with forty-nine centuries
of "traditional" culture? Is the Guggenheim
—Museum with its collections and expertise firmly
—rooted in twentieth-century Western art a legiti-
mate organizer of such an event? How does the
narrative thread of this exhibition relate to the his-
tory of Chinese art as it is understood through the
weight of scholarship on Chinese history and art to
date, and through the Chinese objects exhibited
and studied in museums in Taiwan, Europe, and
America? The answers to these questions will
inevitably be found in the exhibition itself. The
importance of China: 5,000 Years will be a function
of its ability to present a fresh, incredibly rich, and
provocative new chapter to the study of the cultural
history of China.
The story of the genesis and development of
China: $,oooYcars as an exhibition project is itself an
extraordinary tale. That it is organized by, and
shown in, the Guggenheim Museums in New York
derives from a specific sequence of conditions and
circumstances favorable to such an enterprise, and
from the participation and commitment of a
diverse and impressive group of individuals who are
committed to China and to fostering international
understanding through cultural communication.
—The initial impulse for the project its primary
—motivation derives from the simple fact that
China is a country of deep traditions, extraordinary
achievement, startling paradoxes, and enormous
INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
potential. At the close of the twentieth century.
China is inhabited by 1.22 billion people, the
largest population on earth; it occupies the fourth
largest land mass of any country, and is the
projected superpower of the twenty-first century.
China is also in the midst of historic transitions
from a rural/agrarian- to an urban/manufacturmg-
based society, and from a communist command
economy to a capitalist market-based one. Its sheer
size, potential, and history make it a force to be
reckoned with. Yet it is also a country whose char-
acter, culture, and traditions are still very much
unfamiliar in the West.
On both a political and an economic level, China's
future demands a special relationship with the
United States. The two countries are locked in an
embrace that is everywhere in evidence. China
sends 17 percent of its exports to the United
States, and now holds over $130 billion in foreign-
currency reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury
bonds; American companies have more than
$20 billion invested in China; an estimated
fifty thousand Chinese study at American colleges
and universities, constituting the single largest body
of foreign students in the United States; more than
half a million American tourists visited China in
1996; and fifteen million Americans are of Chinese
ancestry. His Excellency Jiang Zemin, President of
the People's Republic of China, visited the United
States last October, and the Honorable Bill Clinton,
President of the United States, is planning a state
visit to China later this year. The growing need for
China and the United States to accommodate one
another has created a simultaneous demand for
cultural engagement, and this was the major pre-
condition for the motivation, the will, and the
opportunities on both sides required to conceive
of and organize this exhibition.
On a more local level, another major precondition
for the exhibition was the nature of the evolving
direction and focus of the Guggenheim Museum
itself. During the past ten years, the Guggenheim
has experienced a significant transformation. With
the renovation of its original Frank 1 loyd Wright
building, the construction of a new addition, and
the establishment of the Guggenheim Museum
S0H0 in 1992, the Guggenheim Foundation broad
ened its physical and programming base and estab
Newlished a strong position in York City, or
the greatest cultural capitals 111 the world. This local
expansion was supplemented In continued
improvements and a modest expansion .it the Pegg)
Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and In the dra-
matic completion and opening of the Guggenheim
Museum Bilbao, a building designed by Frank
mamGehry that critics are saying will take its
place alongside the Frank I loyd Wright designed
Gueeenheim in New York as one ol the two
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