Page 26 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

greatest buildings of the twentieth century. The
Bilbao opening was followed two weeks later by
the opening of Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin.
The Guggenheim is becoming a truly international
museum not only in terms of buildings and loca-
tions, but also through an equally intense commit-
ment to expanding its programming, reflected both
in the growth of its permanent collection and in
the breadth and depth of its special exhibitions.
The original mission of the museum was to collect,
preserve, and present the art of the Modern and
contemporary periods. Nine superlative curators
from three countries have dramatically expanded
the scope of programming, with major
monographic exhibitions devoted to, among
others, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes
Oldenburg, and Robert Rauschenberg; important
historical exhibitions such as Tlie Great Utopia:
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, igi5-igj2, The
Italian Metamorphosis, ig43~ig68, Picasso and the Age
of Iron, and Africa:The Art of a Continent; and
smaller, focused exhibitions such as Max Beckmann
in Exile, Visions of Paris: Robert Delaunay's Series, and criteria and organizational capacities was approved
Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in
Photography. In the process of developing these
projects, the Guggenheim has become a major pro-
Aducer of exhibitions. measure of its success is
reflected in the fact that, during the past five years,
Guggenheim-organized exhibitions have been pre-
sented in more than eighty museums around the
world, from Bilbao to Shanghai, from Los Angeles
to Munich, and from Singapore to Vienna.
A fundamental shift in attitude has complemented
this extraordinary programmatic growth. The
Guggenheim recognizes that culture in the twenti-
eth and twenty-first centuries cannot be treated as a
Western-oriented, Euro-American hegemony.
Museums in particular cannot maintain a high
regard for classical and antique cultures from
around the world while remaining skeptical about
the contemporary art of non-Western traditions.
That a new postmodern, multifaceted, multilingual
contemporary global culture is emerging in an
increasingly interconnected and Internet-linked
world is a fact that cannot be ignored. Africa, Asia,
and South America all sustain vibrant contempo-
rary cultures that a global museum must engage.
The Guggenheim's aspirations as an international
museum are viable only to the degree that a broad-
based international program comes into place. The
—museum buildings for all their architectural bril-
—liance and geographic diversity are only a point of
departure.
The Guggenheim's interest in non-Western cultures
was heralded by Japanese Art After ig4}: Scream
Against the Sky, an exhibition organized in con-
junction with the Yokohama Museum of Art and
INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
presented to critical acclaim at the Guggenheim
Museum SoHo in 1994. For American audiences,
the material was fresh and sophisticated, related to
European attitudes but not derivative. The art
reflected Japanese culture and traditions, in a vocab-
ulary that was simultaneously recognizable and
original. Various commentaries on the exhibition
noted the "Japaneseness" of the material, and
pointed out that this was an art that had been
consistently ignored or overlooked by Western
museums. For the Guggenheim, the project was
exhilarating. The task was to understand the
narrative of postwar Japanese art not only as a
reflection of its immediate sociohistorical context,
but also in relation to the some three thousand
years of cultural history that preceded it.
By late 1994, the stars were almost in alignment for
China: 5, 000 Years to become a reality. The skeletal
—framework of the global Guggenheim and the
—exhibition-organizing engine were largely in
place. The concept of a far-reaching exhibition pro-
gram that included, every few years, an exhibition
challenging the conventional direction of the
Guggenheim while taking advantage of its scholarly
by the Board of Trustees. All that remained was to
connect the source of the vision for China: 3,000
Years with the curatorial expertise to bring it to life.
That connection was provided by Sherman Lee.
More than twenty-five years ago, in 1969, as an
undergraduate economics and political-science
major at Williams College, I took my first art-
—history course on Chinese landscape painting
with Professor Lee. When the opportunity for an
exhibition of Chinese art at the Guggenheim arose,
there was never any doubt in my mind that
Professor Lee was the only person to provide the
bold and unique vision to select it. Happily, several
weeks after I presented the general thesis of an
exhibition of five millennia of Chinese art drawn
exclusively from material in China to him,
Professor Lee agreed to head the curatorial team
for the traditional section.
The next step was to secure the participation and
cooperation of the Chinese. In the autumn of
1994, the Honorable Gianni De Michelis, former
Foreign Minister of Italy and Guggenheim trustee,
helped arrange a meeting with the Honorable
Qian Qichen,Vice Premier and Foreign Minister
of the People's Republic of China. Our mission
was simple: to seek an unprecedented collaboration
with the Chinese government by presenting the
objectives of China: 3, 000 Years with reference to its
political significance in the context of developing
Sino- American relations. As a result of that
meeting the following January, the Guggenheim
was put in contact with representatives of the
Ministry of Culture, National Administration