A Year of Chinese Art at Colgate University

http://www.colgate.edu/arts

Image:
Xu Bing, Tobacco Project, 2000

Xu Bing, Monday, November 10, 2008, 4:30 pm, Golden Auditorium, Little Hall

Xu Bing (b. 1955, Chongquing, Sichuan province, China) was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 1999. His works challenge traditional book arts and print forms through their manipulation of language and the printed word. In 1974 he relocated to the mountains of northern China to perform farm work before entering the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing three years later to study printmaking. After residing and working in New York for eighteen years, he has recently returned to the CAFA to serve as Vice President. Examples of his early work, emerging from the Chinese woodblock printmaking tradition, will be on view in the exhibition, Woodcuts in Modern China, 1937-2998: Toward a Universal Language, Picker Art Gallery, opening December 2, 2008. His visit to Colgate University precedes a solo exhibition of his work, Reading Space: The Art of Xu Bing at the Clifford Gallery, Little Hall, opening January 19, 2009.

Jerome Silbergeld, Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 4:30 pm, Golden Auditorium, Little Hall, The Eric Ryan Memorial Lecture “Curatorial Strategy, Bull Marketry, and the Defining of Contemporary Chinese Art”

Jerome Silbergeld is the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor in Chinese Art and Director of the Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton University. His teaching and publications are in the areas of traditional and contemporary Chinese painting, Chinese gardens and architecture, and Chinese cinema. Silbergeld has dealt with topics such as artistic tradition in times of political upheaval, the historically unstable identity of “China” and its impact on the writing of “Chinese art history,” regional diversity in Chinese gardens, and visual communication in a culture of text censorship. He is currently organizing two exhibitions, on contemporary Chinese/ American art at Princeton University and on Chinese documentary photography for the China Institute in New York City.

Shijie (2004) Thursday, November 13, 7:00 pm, Golden Auditorium, Little Hall
Written and directed by Zhang Ke Jia, introduced by Jerome Silbergeld.

“A Year of Chinese Art” at Colgate University

Over the coming year, Colgate’s campus will come alive with a series of events that present twentieth century Chinese art in both historical and contemporary contexts. Major support for these events is made possible through the generosity of Robert H. N. Ho ’56 in honor of Theodore Herman, Professor of Geography Emeritus and lifelong friend of the Ho family. Exhibitions in the Picker Art Gallery, the Clifford Gallery, the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and Loesch Special Collections; two scholarly catalogues; lectures by visiting artists; performance; and curricular programming will explore contemporary Chinese woodblock print art, installation art, and film. These events will offer an unprecedented opportunity to raise awareness and the profile on the Colgate campus of China’s burgeoning contemporary art scene and the traditions from which it has arisen. Drawing upon Colgate’s own art collections and resources, contributions by contemporary Chinese artists, and the expertise of scholars of Chinese arts and culture at Colgate and neighboring institutions, A Year of Chinese Art at Colgate University will stimulate research and cross-disciplinary curricular opportunities in unique ways, and will encourage students to engage with Chinese artistic culture as an important part of their educational experience. Co-organized by the Picker Art Gallery and the Department of Art and Art History, with the support of the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts, Asian Studies, the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum, Music Department, Longyear Museum and Colgate Libraries, A Year of Chinese Art at Colgate University will focus the strengths and resources of multiple University entities on contemporary Chinese Art for the first time.

For a complete schedule of events please go to http://www.colgate.edu/arts or contact [email protected]

ICPA The Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts at Colgate University

The mission of the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts at Colgate University is to support and promote excellence in the creative and performing arts, and to stimulate critical dialogue on the arts in the liberal arts context. The Institute encourages and supports projects that embody the broad vision and centrality of the arts, and that underscore the interdisciplinary, international and cross-cultural dimensions of creative and performing arts practice.

For further information on The Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts, please contact: DeWitt Godfrey, [email protected]

For more information go to: http://www.colgate.edu/arts