Special Yunnan Issue

Table of Contents

• Bringing You Up To Date
• Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project
• Yunnan Specialists Come to the United States
• Specialists Travel to China from the United States and South and Southeast Asia
• In Their Own Words
• Center Holds a Review of the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project
• Minority Arts in Yunnan
• Intellectual Climate in China Since the Tiananmen Events
• Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project: Cooperating Institutions and Individuals
• O’Neill Teachers Exchange in Arts Education
• The Center’s Core Programs Continue Unabated
• The Center Works With the Sichuan Conservatory
• Planned Exchange Trips Unfortunately Canceled
• Pacific Composers Project (PCP)
• Chou Wen-chung’s Many and Varied Activities
• The Center Receives Funding for a Variety of New Projects
• Advisory Council Changes
• Purpose and Organization
• Acknowledgments
• Staff Changes

Bringing You Up To Date

Our last newsletter, published in the spring of 1992, reported on the Pacific Music Festival, held in Sapporo, Japan, in the summer of 1990. Because we have not issued a comprehensive report on our activities since then, we have much news to share.

In late 1988 and early 1989 the Center had embarked on a series of innovative projects we identified as our Core Program (see “Core Programs Continue Unabated,” p. 28, for more information). Designed to address some of the gaps in U.S.-China cultural exchange, we initiated conferences; workshops; seminars; and radio, video, and translation projects. One example of our Core Programs was the introduction into China of a “musical season”—something China had never had before. A collaborative effort between the Center and various music institutions in China was to result in a range of musical events that would take place in each season.

Another project that fell under our Core Programs was an artists’ workshop held in June/July 1991 in San Diego. This program, held in collaboration with the International Institute for the Arts and the Art department and China Studies Institute at San Diego State University, brought painters from China to the California campus for a four-week seminar. After the seminar the University provided the artists with studio space and the time to create new works. San Diego State mounted an exhibition of their efforts, marking the culmination of this project.

We also began preparing—for distribution—Chinese editions of conference proceedings from: (1) our July 1988 Tarrytown, N.Y., Arts Education Conference, held at the completion of our Rockefeller Brothers Fund-supported, three-year collaborative project with Harvard Project Zero; (2) our August 1988 Columbia University, Mainland/Taiwan Composers Conference on ” Tradition and the Future of Chinese Music”; and (3) the 1991 Artists’ Workshop described above. The latter two were later distributed broadly to artists and educators throughout China. 

Following the tragic events of the summer of 1989, the Center suspended exchange work with China to await the return of an atmosphere more conducive to the creative process and professional projects in the arts. The venue for the planned 1990 Pacific Music Festival (PMF), of which then-Advisory Council member Leonard Bernstein was artistic director, was shifted from China to Japan. The Center spent most of FY1989-90 planning for the PMF. We recruited a 123-member youth orchestra from the entire Pacific region; designed and carried out a Pacific Composer’s Conference (PCC), with forty-six participants; and designed and oversaw three contemporary Pacific concerts, which were performed in conjunction with the PCC. (See Newsletter Volume 10, Spring 1992.)

While the PMF was a fascinating and extremely worthwhile enterprise on its own, it also helped us to see the value of including Southeast Asia as an integral part of our projects. In the late summer of 1990, as we were beginning to resume our Core Program activities, the Ford Foundation approached us with another programmatic option, which, coincidentally, tapped into our newly forged interest in the Southeast Asian region. Ultimately, Ford’s initiative resulted in our taking another new direction . . . one that has already lasted for five years.

Ford’s involvement in economic development projects in Yunnan Province, specifically in the fields of forestation and reproductive health, prompted the Foundation’s representatives to consider adding a cultural component to their work. Ford’s interest was specifically in the traditional cultures of Yunnan’s twenty-five minority nationalities.

Although we were concerned that a major project on minority arts might distract us from our commitment to arts exchange throughout China and that it might drain our limited resources, we began to carry out extensive research on Yunnan and on the nature of its population and its arts. 

Yunnan Province protrudes from China’s southwest comer, sharing boundaries with Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, and Vietnam. The province is less than 100 miles from Thailand, across Laos or Myanmar, and even closer to northeast India, over mountain passes across Tibet. It is sizable—slightly larger than Italy— with a dramatically diverse environment, ranging from tropical forests to snow capped mountain ranges.

Yunnan’s population is about twice that of the state of New York and is easily one of the most colorful mixes in the world. Yunnan is home to numerous groups of peoples with differing ethnic and cultural roots, known in China as “minority nationalities.” Twenty-five of the fifty-five minority nationalities in China are found here, sixteen* of which are exclusive to the province. Most of these nationalities have many branches, which display distinct cultural traits of their own. Thirteen* of Yunnan’s nationalities also share ethnic and cultural traits with the peoples of Southeast Asia.

* The numbers sixteen and thirteen are approximations, as the exact count frequently shifts with the identification of new nationalities and the recognition of subdivisions of already identified nationalities.

Not only is Yunnan an area of diversity in its natural environment and peoples, it is also a province undergoing striking change. Modernization and tourism are rapidly revising the economic picture. While additional foreign currency will bolster the living standard of local people, the concomitant changes threaten to exploit or destroy traditional cultures that have survived intact for several thousand years.

In the fall of 1990, the Center informed the Ford Foundation’s Beijing representative that the Center director would agree to the Foundation’s suggestion that he conduct an exploratory trip to Yunnan. We based our decision on three findings: (1) that Yunnan is the province in China with the largest number of minority nationalities with living traditions; (2) that many of Yunnan’s minority peoples are ethnically and culturally related to the peoples throughout Southeast Asia; and (3) that Southeast Asia is an area that has attracted the attention of many Western scholars, who have created an available database on which we could draw, and many study projects on cultural issues have already been undertaken in some of the countries there.

Center Director Chou Wen-chung embarked upon a trip to China in December 1990 with a dual mission. Earlier he had applied for a grant to travel to China to study the intellectual climate in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen in the summer of 1989. This would be a follow-up on Center work undertaken in 1987 by a delegation organized by the Center under an earlier Ford grant to conduct a broad survey on the same issue in three Chinese cities. (See Newsletter, Fall 1990, Volume 9) It was agreed that Chou would combine the two goals: of exploring the possibility of a minority nationalities cultural conservation project in Yunnan and, simultaneously, of investigating the overall climate for intellectuals and artists post-Tiananmen. (See edited excerpts from Chou’s “Minority Arts in Yunnan” and “Intellectual Climate in China Since the Tiananmen Events,” pp. 18-21.) After visiting Yunnan, Chou traveled to Xi’an and then retraced his 1987 route, stopping in Chengdu, Beijing, and Shanghai. Chou concluded that China, which has undergone one hundred fifty years of exposure to the West, had responded with “two powerful and diametrically opposed reactions: cultural xenophobia, on the one hand, and complete Westernization, on the other. The ensuing conflicts in the arts between these two extremes have never been resolved. Worse, no middle ground has taken hold in the Chinese mind throughout the past century.”

During a second Yunnan trip, Chou formed a Specialists Group to function as a kind of Steering Committee in China. This group was made up of individuals with a keen interest in the issues of maintaining living traditional cultures and the willingness to work toward that end. (Current “Specialists Group” members are listed at the end of this article.) With this small committee, an agreement was forged, called the Joint Plan on Yunnan Nationalities Cultures, with a mandate to choose and carry out appropriate cultural conservation projects in Yunnan.

At that point the Center’s intention was for the Yunnan Project to be carried out both horizontally and vertically— horizontally among the rural villages; vertically, with the major cultural institutions in Yunnan’s capital city Kunming. Agreements were negotiated between the Center and the Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission (Minwei) and between the Center and the government of rural Luxi County, chosen because of its rich mix of nationalities and its enlightened leadership.

Unfortunately, for us, the county executives of Luxi were soon there after promoted to other positions, and we have been unable to carry out projects directly with any rural villages. A goal for the future, however, would be to resurrect this aspect of the project. The agreement with Minwei has remained in place over the ensuing four years, and Minwei has functioned as the Center’s counterpart in Yunnan. One more preparatory trip was needed before all the plans would be in place —that was a journey to Southeast and South Asia, including Manila, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bali, and New Delhi. This trip, undertaken in January of 1992, served to reinforce our belief in the significance of Yunnan to the entire cultural region and the relevance of the diverse cultures represented in these locales to the situation in southwestern China.

Not only did the Center feel all the more committed to bring this area into the programming, but we found much enthusiasm for cooperation with China on this work among educators, artists, museum personnel, and cultural leaders throughout the region. We also heard uniform expression of the belief that a model for cultural conservation was greatly needed in Southeast Asia, and, while these areas surely had much to offer China, they also hoped to gain much from their  involvement in this broad-reaching project. Convinced of the need to “triangulate” the project, the Center sought additional funding to enable scholars, educators, arts administrators, and artists from South and Southeast Asia to take part in the Joint Plan. Grants were received from both the Asian Cultural Council and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia to carry out the Asia-to-Asia dimension of this work. 

Over the course of the three-year grant period, the Center has worked closely with innumerable Yunnan institutions, including the Nationalities Museum, Nationalities Institute, Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Arts, Painting Academy, Nationalities Painting Academy, Folk Arts Center, Travel and Tourism Bureau, Parks Department, Bureau of Culture, Education Commission, Provincial Museum, Yunnan University, and Honghe and Xishuangbanna Prefectures. With some of these, fully developed projects were undertaken; with some, projects were initiated but could not be carried out; and with others, extensive discussions were held, but projects did not result.

The four major projects to which we devoted most of our energy from 1992 through 1995 were: (1) the establishment of a new arts department—for the teaching of music, dance, and visual arts — at the Yunnan Nationalities Institute; (2) the design and planning for a new museum of nationalities cultures; (3) the implementation of a program for mentorship to pass on living traditional arts of the minority nationalities; and (4) the formation of a fieldwork/research group of younger scholars with diverse and innovative research topics to pursue.

The Yunnan Nationalities Institute is one of thirteen colleges, countrywide, with the goal of educating China’s minority students. The Center has constructed a draft curriculum for the Nationalities Institute’s new arts department that will address the specific academic needs of minority nationalities students. The students will pursue four tracks of study, consecutively: (1) training in their own nationality traditions; (2) training in Han majority traditions; (3) background in the varied traditions of the arts throughout Asia, especially Southeast Asia; and (4) a working knowledge of Western art traditions.

Our work with the Nationalities Museum, which opened November 1995, focused on the evolution of a mission statement, an awareness of the needs of the museum’s constituencies, and the acquisition of modern techniques of administration and exhibition. Particular attention has been given to the significance of performance, demonstration, education, outreach, and satellite programs as integral to the museum’s unique goals of establishing collections that represent all cultures of Yunnan’s nationalities and serving a public that remains in their own villages—often remote from the museum site.

The Center promoted the establishment of a mentorship/apprenticeship program as a non-governmental organization (NGO), a relatively new phenomenon in China. The program recruited rural youths to study indigenous music and dance with selected village master artists for the purpose of: promoting greater respect for local artistic traditions, offering master folk artists opportunities to perform and teach, and affording incentives for young people to learn their own traditions—all in the hope of ensuring the continuation and development of local heritages in the face of rapid modernization and tourism.

The program has been in existence for more than a year and has successfully recruited mentors and apprentices to work in a single training site near Kunming. However, it has yet to find its bearings on fundamental policies, such as decentralizing training sites to avoid removal of its participants from their own communities, streamlining the training process to avoid long-term disruption of participants’ community relationships, and securing local cooperation to make it possible for returning participants to contribute meaningfully to the conservation of their own cultures. The program must also resolve such issues as the temptation to become an elite performing group or the pros and cons of joining the profitmaking tourist industry.

Finally, the Center offered encouragement and modest financial support—in the form of individual awards—to a select group of younger scholars and artists working in fields related to cultural anthropology. (“Fieldwork/Research Group” members are listed at the end of this article.) This recognition has enabled them to devote more effort to fieldwork and research on minority cultures, particularly in remote rural areas. The result has been the establishment of a Center for the Study of the Arts of Minority Nationalities at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

While some of their work has received praise from abroad, these researchers still face daunting challenges, such as utilizing up-to-date research theories and methodologies, acquiring modern equipment, and undertaking demanding fieldwork with meager financial resources. All this must be done in the face of the rapid disappearance of rural cultural objects or massive exploitation by commercial agents and even scholars from abroad, armed with hard currency.

As for the institutions with which the Center explored options, several may be included in the Joint Plan if it continues after 1995 (pending funding). Foremost among these is the Folk Arts Center, which is a recent manifestation of the Qunyi Guan (Institute for Arts for the Masses). The Qunyi Guan used to be a governmental apparatus for promoting and organizing cultural events, using trained personnel, functioning from the cities to the tiniest hamlets throughout China. Its goals were ideological as well as cultural.

Perhaps worse than carrying out politically motivated cultural activities, its cadres were usually trained only superficially by graduates from Western style academies or conservatories. They would, as a rule, “improve” the songs and dances of the communities in which they were stationed, drawing on their meager knowledge of Western concepts and techniques.

Today the picture has changed. Ideology is gone; massive organized cultural events have been curtailed. The Folk Arts Center has begun a genuine attempt at collecting arts from the people. 

The Folk Arts Center still retains the network of contacts it inherited in almost every hamlet in the province. In the future, we expect to use this well developed network to conduct truly  authentic fieldwork that will enrich local self-knowledge and province-wide understanding of the arts and cultures of Yunnan’s nationalities.

The Yunnan Institute of Arts was one of the first cultural agencies the Center saw as a potential partner for a major project within the Joint Plan. Our early interest was aroused because of the Institute’s position as the only educational institution in Yunnan that trains professional artists of all kinds and art teachers for Yunnan’s school system. However, no project has yet developed out of our numerous discussions.

Early on, the Center specifically explored the possibility of collaborating on research of nationalities arts, for which there was an in-house designated group of researchers that had carried out initial work. In recent years, unfortunately, because of leadership and budgetary problems, the researchers have abandoned this effort.

The situation, however, has begun to improve. The Western arts teaching methodology that has served as the pedagogical model for decades is being complemented with a more Chinese and traditional approach. The Center hopes to be able to carry out collaborative programs with the Institute of Arts in the future.

The Yunnan Provincial Museum is another institution with which the Center had extensive dealings but has not shared a collaborative program. Although the Museum is fortunate enough to have holdings of 130,000 objects, of which 20,000 are from nationalities cultures, its budget remains constrained and its programming rather conventional. Modern approaches to community education and outreach have not yet been tried by this institution, known for its excellent bronze collection.

Both the Yunnan Painting Academy and the Nationalities Painting Academy have also had rather conservative approaches to training and exhibition. Although we held discussions with them, we have not been able to include them in the Joint Plan. In the most recent years, there is the hint of a more forward-looking attitude at these institutions, demonstrated by some of the young arts faculty.

Yunnan University, which has a Southwest China Border Nationalities Economic and Cultural Research Center, was another venerable local institution with which the Center had frequent meetings in setting up the Joint Plan projects. Although the interest was there, collaboration was hindered by an inability to find appropriate projects of mutual interest.

Two other major local agencies with which we tried to negotiate projects were the Yunnan Education Commission and the Department of Culture. It was the Center’s hope that Yunnan’s precollegiate teachers and its cultural workers (or cultural cadres) would be able to participate in the Joint Plan projects. Unfortunately, although extensive efforts were made to have the specialists from abroad interact with professionals from these two agencies, such projects never reached fruition. (See story on “O’Neill Teachers Exchange,” p. 26, for a separate project carried out with the Yunnan Education Commission.)

Finally, administrators from both the Travel and Tourism Bureau and the Parks Bureau were also included in our initial planning efforts; but to no avail. Perhaps we will be able to develop future projects that involve their staffs in efforts to develop cultural or heritage tourism.

Specialists Group

• Gao Zongyu, Director, Yunnan Nationalities Museum
• He Yaohua, President, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
• Huang Huikun, Vice President, Yunnan Nationalities Institute
• Tian Feng, Director, Yunnan Mentorship/Apprentice Program; Composer-in-Residence, Central Philharmonic
• Wang Zhengfang, Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Commission, Yunnan People’s Congress; former Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Ye Gongxian, former President, Yunnan Institute of Arts
• Zhao Jiawen, President, Yunnan Nationalities Institute
• Yin Shaoting, Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Museum

Fieldwork/Research Group

• Deng Qiyao, Deputy Director, Nationality Literature Research Institute, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
• Guo Jing, Deputy Director, Institute of History, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
• Hao Yuejun, Assistant Research Fellow, Film and Video Division (Anthropology), Information and Reference Center, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
• Wang Qinghua, Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Ethnological Studies, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
• Zhao Yaoxin, Head, Visual Arts Department, Yunnan Folk Arts Center
• Zhou Kaimo, Deputy Director, Research Division, Yunnan Institute of Arts

Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project

Since the summer of 1990, the main focus of the Center’s work has been the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project. Designed to assist the cultural leaders of Yunnan Province in creating a comprehensive strategy for the continuation and further development of the traditional arts of Yunnan’s twenty-five minority nationalities, the project has involved hundreds of specialists in China, in the United States, and throughout the Pacific region. This special issue of the Center’s Newsletter highlights our work with Yunnan’s leaders in nationalities arts and arts education and also provides an update on our other continuing programs.

The approximately sixteen nationalities found exclusively in Yunnan (not in any other Chinese province) are: Hani, Lahu, Jingpo, Achang, Jinuo, Nu, Drung, Dai, Bulang, De’ang, and Va (sixteen with the Kemu, the Kucong and other yet to be formally recognized nationalities). The thirteen nationalities of Yunnan Province that are also found in countries of Southeast Asia are: Miao, Hani, Dai, Jingpo, Lahu, Lisu, Va, Yao, Yi, Zhuang, Bouyei, Kemu, and De’ang.

Yunnan Specialists Come to the United States

Over the course of the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project, Yunnan specialists have come to the United States to visit cultural institutions and meet with their counterparts in the fields of museum design, administration, and education; arts education; folk arts and mentorship; and research and fieldwork.

Cultural Leaders’ Inaugural Visit

In April 1993, a study group headed by Ma Lisan, Director, Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission, spent four weeks in the United States on a professional visit designed to give them an overview of the American response to the issues of keeping living traditions viable in the modern world. During their month in the U.S. the group met with museum, folk arts, cultural conservation, and arts education specialists. Other members of the group were Wang Zhengfang, Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission, and Chairman, Nationalities Museum Preparatory Committee; Gao Zongyu, First Deputy Chairman, Yunnan Nationalities Museum Preparatory Committee; Ye Gongxian, former President, Yunnan Institute of Arts; Tian Feng, Composer-in-Residence, Central Philharmonic of China; Huang Huikun, Acting President, Yunnan Nationalities Institute; and He Shaoying, Chairperson, History Department, Yunnan Nationalities Institute. The seven specialists from Yunnan traveled in both urban and rural areas in a wide variety of regions in the United States. Among the people with whom they met were:

New York City, New York

• Radhika Balakrishnana, Assistant Program Officer, Asia Programs, The Ford Foundation
• Susan Ball, Executive Director, College Art Association
• Barbara Berger, Docent, The Asia Society Galleries, The Asia Society
• Alison Bernstein, Director, Education and Culture Program, The Ford Foundation
• Irene Bloom, Associate Professor, Asia/Middle East Studies, Columbia University
• Sarah Bradley, Program Associate, Asian Cultural Council
• Myron L. Cohen, Professor, Anthropology, Columbia University
• Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Director, The Studio Museum in Harlem
• Patricia Cruz, Deputy Director- Programs, The Studio Museum in Harlem
• Theodore deBary, Provost Emeritus, Columbia University
• Dawn Delbanco, Professor, Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
• Vishakha Desai, Director, The Asia Society Galleries, The Asia Society
• Peter Geithner, Director, Asia Programs, The Ford Foundation
• T. C. Hsu, President, The Starr Foundation
• Joan Jeffri, Coordinator, Program in Arts Administration, Teachers College, Columbia University
• Laurel Kendall, Curator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History 
• Fran La Fleur, Curator, Chinese Collection, C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University
• Terrill E. Lautz, Vice President and Secretary, The Henry Luce Foundation, and member of the Center’s Advisory Council
• Robert A. Levinson, Chairman, Andrex Industries Corporation, and member of the Center’s Advisory Council
• Ruth Mayleas, Program Officer, Education and Culture Program, The Ford Foundation
• Tom Miller, Scientific Assistant, American Museum of Natural History
• Michael Morris, Executive Vice President, Burson-Marsteller, and member of the Center’s Advisory Council
• Douglas P. Murray, President, Lingnan Foundation, and member of the Center’s Advisory Council
• Polly Mooter, Curator, The Museum for African Art
• Anne Ofstedal, China Program Coordinator, United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia
• Arthur H. Rosen, President Emeritus, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and Member of the Center’s Advisory Council
• David Sensabaugh, Assistant Professor, Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
• Marta Vega, Director, Caribbean Cultural Center
• David Vikner, President, United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia
• Christine Vincent, Program Officer, Education and Culture Program, The Ford Foundation
• Susan Vogel, Director, The Museum for African Art
• David Wang, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Culture, Columbia University
• Carl Wolz, Dean of Dance, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts
• Alice Yang, Curator, The New Museum of Contemporary Art
• Teddy Yoshikami, Assistant Coordinator of Community Education, American Museum of Natural History

Mystic Seaport, Inc.; Mystic, Connecticut

• Jane Keener, Vice President for Curatorial and Educational Programs, Mystic Seaport, Inc.
• Jan Larson, Supervisor of School Services, Mystic Seaport, Inc.
• Rob Richter, Assistant to the Supervisor of School Services, Mystic Seaport, Inc.

Old Sturbridge Village; Sturbridge, Massachusetts

• Barbara Hopkins, Old Sturbridge Village
• Crawford Lincoln, Director, Old Sturbridge Village

Boston, Massachusetts

• Joanne Morgan, Principal for Museum Planning, E. Verner Johnson & Associates
• E. Verner Johnson, Principal, AIA, E. Verner Johnson & Associates

Washington, DC

• Scott Baker, Associate Director of the Gallery of Art, College of Fine Arts, Howard University 
• Vivien Ta-Ying Chen, Folklife Specialist, Smithsonian Institution, Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies
• Feng Wei, Intern, Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution
• Mattibelle Gittinger, Curator, Southeast Asian Textiles, Textile Museum
• Hank Grasso, Designer, Department of Exhibition Design, National Museum of American History
• Raina Green, Director of American Indian Programs, National Museum of American History 
• Richard Kurin, Director, Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution
• Linley Logan, Exhibit Programs Assistant, National Museum of the American Indian
• Howard Morrison, Museum Program Specialist, Division of Education, Department of Public Programs, National Museum of American History
• Fred Nahwooksy, Community Service Coordinator, National Museum of the American Indian
• Diana Parker, Director, Smithsonian Folklife Festival
• Mary Sams, Librarian, Textile Museum
• Peter Seitei, Senior Folklorist, Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution
• Jim Volkert, Deputy Assistant Director for Exhibition and Facilities Planning, National Museum of the American Indian
• Helen Wechsler, Program Assistant, International Programs, American Association of Museums
• Mary Louise Wood, Director, American Association of Museums

Nashville, Tennessee

• Robert Cogswell, Folk Arts Coordinator, Tennessee Arts Commission
• Arlyn Ende, Program Director, Cannon County Arts Center
• Richard A. Northcutt, Chairman, Board of Directors, Cannon County Arts Center
• Faye Northcutt-Knox, Director, Business Development, Stones River Hospital
• Hazel Charlene Parker, President, Cannon Association of Craft Artists
• Dale Prater, woodworker
• Connie Rigsby, Director, Cannon County Square Dancers
• Albert Thomas, basket maker
• David Thomas, woodworker

Memphis, Tennessee

• Bertha Bachus, quilter
• Giatout Lee, storyteller
• Joe Light, painter
• Annie McDaniel, storyteller
• Judy Peiser, Executive Director, Center for Southern Folklore
• Mose Vinson, pianist

Chicago, Illinois

• Gerald Adelmann, President, Canal Corridor Association, and member of the Center’s Advisory Council
• Carolyn Blackmon, Chairman, Education Department, Field Museum of Natural History
• Bennett Bronson, Chairman, Department of Anthropology and Curator, Asian Archeology & Ethnology, Field Museum of Natural History
• Margaret Burroughs, Founder and President Emeritus, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Amina Dickerson, Director, Education and Public Programs, Chicago Historical Society
• Felice Dublon, Dean of Student Affairs, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Richard Duggan, Design Manager, Field Museum of Natural History
• Teri Edelstein, Deputy Director, Art Institute of Chicago
• Calvin Gray, Developer, African Exhibit, Field Museum of Natural History
• Jonathan Haas, Vice President of Museum Affairs and Director, Center for Understanding and Cultural Change, Field Museum of Natural History
• Cheryl Hahn, Gallery Administrator, Lockport Gallery
• Barbara Harrison, Museum Volunteer, Field Museum of Natural History
• Bruno Nettl, Professor Emeritus of Music and Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Claire Oakes, Museum Volunteer, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Martin Prekop, Dean, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Ramon B. Price, Chief Curator, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Phyllis Rabineau, Deputy Chair, Program Development, Field Museum of Natural History 
• Gwendolyn Robinson, Executive Director, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Charlotte M. Rogan, Public Events Coordinator, Lockport Gallery
• Cap Sease, Head, Division of Conservation, Field Museum of Natural History
• Jenny Solataroff, Interpreter, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Michael Spock, Vice President of Public Programs, Field Museum of Natural History
• Jessie Thymes, Coordinator, Outreach Program, Field Museum of Natural History
• Audrey Tuggle, Museum Volunteer, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Susan Webb, Director of Development, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Isabelle Wong, Director of Overseas Projects/East Asia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Albuquerque, New Mexico

• Pat Reck, Curator, Pueblo Indian Museum, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
• Marian Rodee, Curator, Southwestern Ethnology, University of New Mexico
• Joe Sando, Director, Institute for Pueblo Indian Studies, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

Santa Fe, New Mexico

• Duane Anderson, Vice President of Operations, School of American Research
• Tomas Atencio, Professor, University of New Mexico, and President, Rio Grande Institute 
• Stephen Becker, Director, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• Bruce Bernstein, Chief Curator, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• Charlene Cerny, Director, Museum of International Folk Art 
• Tom Chavas, Director, Palace of the Governors
• Walter Dasheno, Governor, Santa Clara Pueblo
• Gloria Emerson, Director, Center for Research and Cultural Exchange, Institute of American  Indian Arts
• Paul Gonzales, Director, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
• Michael Hering, Director, Indian Arts Research Center, School of American Research
• Alice King, First Lady of New Mexico
• The Honorable Bruce King, Governor of New Mexico
• Edmund Ladd, Curator of Ethnology, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico 
• Vernon Lujan, Educator, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• Elizabeth Naranjo, potter, Santa Clara Pueblo
• Gloria Naranjo, Assistant Tourism Director, Santa Clara Pueblo
• Jody Naranjo, potter, Santa Clara Pueblo
• Rose Naranjo, potter, Santa Clara Pueblo
• Tessie Naranjo, Director, Santa Clara Pueblo Cultural Preservation Project
• Marie A. Reyna, Executive Director, Oo-oonah Children’s Art Center
• George Rivera, Director, Pojoaque Pueblo Poeh Center and Museum
• Paula Rivera, Assistant Curator, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• Jillian Steiner Sandrock, Executive Director, Fund for Folk Culture
• Kathryn Tijerina, President, Institute of American Indian Arts
• David Warren, Research Associate, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

San Francisco, California

• Albert Cheng, Director, Administrative Services, California School Leadership Academy
• Him Mark Lai, Member, Board of Directors, Chinese Historical Society of America
• Manni Liu, Assistant to the Executive Director and Curatorial Assistant, Chinese Culture Center
• Dr. Jane Tom
• Dr. Sanford Tom

Two Nationalities Institute Scholars Visit New York

Huang Huikun, Acting President, Yunnan Nationalities Institute (N.I.), and He Shaoying, Chairperson, History Department, N.I., were visiting scholars at the University of Virginia for the spring semester of 1994. For both of them it was a return trip, since Huang and He had participated in the April 1993 Cultural Leaders’ Inaugural Study Group and He had previously spent an academic year at the University of Virginia.

Huang was in the United States to study the history of Western anthropological theory and He was conducting research to compare non-mainstream cultures in China and the U.S. In June 1994 the two scholars made a professional visit to New York to meet with educators and specialists in educational administration. They also visited the American Museum of Natural History and renewed their acquaintance with Laurel Kendall, Curator, Department of Anthropology, who had traveled to China for the Yunnan Project in May 1993 and who had spent time with the April 1993 Chinese study group. Among the people with whom they met were:

• Susan Carnochan, Director, The Rassias Method Language Program, The Division of Continuing Studies, Baruch College, CUNY
• Frances Degen Horowitz, President, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York
• Jorge Izquierdo, Principal, P.S. 163
• Delmos J. Jones, Professor, Ph.D. Program in Anthropology, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York
• Frank Kehl, Assistant to the Provost for Special Projects, Office of the Provost, Baruch College, CUNY
• Laurel Kendall, Curator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History 
• Nathaniel Normant, Coordinator of Scholastic Development, Provost’s Office, Baruch College, CUNY
• Carmen Pedrogo, Affirmative Action Officer, Baruch College, CUNY
• Pamela T. Reid, Associate Provost and Dean for Academic Affairs, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York
• Gail Smith, Program Director, CUNY Pipeline Program, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York
• Don Watkins, Ombudsman and Professor of Higher Education Administration, The Department of Education, Baruch College, CUNY

Museum Administration Study Trip

In September 1994, Xie Mohua, Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Museum, traveled to the United States for three weeks to focus on all aspects of museum administration. In addition to visiting a full range of museums and galleries, he participated for one week in New York University’s graduate program in Museum Studies. In Chicago he had a residency at the Field Museum of Natural History, which gave him exposure to all museum functions, from registration to exhibition design; from conservation to outreach and education. In Santa Fe, not only did Xie work closely with the administration and staff of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, but he also participated in a four-day field trip that traced the history of the Navajo Nation from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Among the individuals with whom he met are those listed below:

New York City, New York

• Linda Dunne, Assistant Director for Administration, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum 
• Diana Fane, Curator of African, Oceanic, and New World Art, Brooklyn Museum
• John Fell, Exhibitions Coordinator, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Laura James, Head of Development, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Flora Kaplan, Professor and Director, Museum Studies Program, New York University
• Laurel Kendall, Curator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History 
• David McFadden, Curator of Decorative Arts and Assistant Director for Collections, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Caroline Mortimer, Special Assistant to the Director, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum 
• Dianne Pilgrim, Director, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Cordelia Rose, Registrar, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Erika Sanger, Manager, Public Programs and Media, Brooklyn Museum
• Debbie Schwartz, Vice Director of Education, Brooklyn Museum
• Stephen Van Dyk, Chief Librarian, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• George Wheeler, Research Chemist, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• David Wright, Registrar and Archivist, Pierpoint Morgan Library
• Susan Yelavich, Assistant Director for Public Programs, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Chicago, Illinois

• Gerald Adelmann, President, Canal Corridor Association
• Willard Boyd, President, Field Museum of Natural History
• Bennett Bronson, Curator and Chair of Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural History 
• Jacqueline Carter, Assistant to the President for Cultural Understanding, Center for Cultural Understanding and Change, Field Museum of Natural History
• Jim Croft, Vice President, Finance, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc. 
• Teri Edelstein, Deputy Director, Art Institute of Chicago
• Jean Feit, Secretary, Education Department, Chicago Historical Society
• Laura Gates, Vice President, Museum Affairs, Field Museum of Natural History
• Chris Gross, Collections Manager, Field Museum of Natural History
• Diane Hanau-Strain, Designer, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Chuimei Ho, Research Associate, Field Museum of Natural History
• Janet Kamien, Director, Exhibits, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc. 
• Janice Klein, Registrar, Field Museum of Natural History
• Marie Lettiere, Assistant Educator for Public Programs, Chicago Historical Society
• Dejin Li, Senior Archeologist, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Field Museum of Natural History
• James Lowers, Director of Auxiliary Services, Retail, Field Museum of Natural History
• D. Lynn McRainey, Associate Educator for School Programs, Chicago Historical Society
• Jean Slusa, Director of Family Programs, Kraft Education Center, Art Institute of Chicago
• Marian Thomas, Director of Educational Programs, The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

• Duane Anderson, Vice President of Operations, School of American Research
• Stephen Becker, Director, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• J. J. Brody, Research Curator, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology
• Emile du Bois, Museum Tour Coordinator, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum 
• Preston Duwyenie, Instructor, Institute of American Indian Arts
• Nora Fisher, Curator of Textiles, Museum of International Folk Art
• Marita Hinds, Manager, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
• Eunice Kahn, Museum Registrar, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
• Tammy Rahr, Educator, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• Pearl Sunrise, Instructor, Studio II Fashion Design, Institute of American Indian Arts
• Ed Wapp, Instructor, Music Studio, Institute of American Indian Arts
• Melanie Yazzie, Instructor, Institute of American Indian Arts

Arts Department Curriculum Study Group

During October and November 1994, a group of specialists from the Yunnan Nationalities Institute came to the United States to visit departments, colleges, and schools of fine arts and music throughout the United States. Their trip was made in preparation for the establishment of programming and curriculum and the training of faculty in their newly established arts department. This arts department will be the first of its kind, designed primarily to train students from rural minority villages in the arts and cultures of their own traditions.

Pu Tongjin, Vice President for Academic Affairs; Yang Dejun, Researcher, Nationalities Research; Yang Jun, Chairman, Preparatory Committee, Department of the Arts; and Wang Sidai, Associate Professor of Han Chinese Language and Literature and Director of the Nationality Folk Literature Research Group, traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States. After an introduction to mainstream arts programs they focused on minority or non-mainstream programs. Among the individuals with whom they met were:

New York City, New York

• Stephen Clapp, Dean, The Juilliard School
• Carol Convissor, Director of Special Projects, The Juilliard School
• Vishakha Desai, Director of the Galleries, The Asia Society
• Nathalie Gleboff, Executive Director, School of American Ballet
• Lewis Kaplan, Violin Instructor, The Juilliard School
• Elizabeth Keen, Dance Instructor, The Juilliard School
• Charles S. Olton, Dean, Parsons School of Design
• Joseph W. Polisi, President, The Juilliard School
• Roger Shepherd, Chair, Department of Fine Arts, Parsons School of Design
• Leon Waller, Museum Educator, Brooklyn Museum

Wesleyan University; Middletown, Connecticut

• Abraham Adzenyah, Instructor, Music Department
• John Barlow, Instructor, Music Department
• Lauren Cowdery, Instructor, Dance Department
• Leo Leansing, Dean of Arts and Humanities
• Urip Sri Maeny, Instructor, Dance Department
• Helen Mensah, Instructor, Dance Department
• Marianne Phillips, Instructor, Dance Department
• Samarsam, Instructor, Music Department
• Jane Shaw, Director, Center of the Arts
• Mark Slobin, Professor, Music Department
• Su Zheng, Assistant Professor, Music Department

Baltimore, Maryland

• Ray Allen, Vice President, Maryland Institute, College of Art
• Stephen G. Baxter, Acting Dean, Peabody Conservatory of Music
• Leslie King-Hammond, Dean of Graduate Studies, Maryland Institute, College of Art
• Fred Lazarus, President, Maryland Institute, College of Art
• Frankie Martin, Mentoring Specialist, Mentoring Network, Maryland Institute, College of Art 
• Sana Musasama, Ceramicist, Maryland Institute, College of Art
• David Simon, Director for Academic Affairs, Baltimore School for the Arts
• Elizabeth Tolbert, Professor, Peabody Conservatory of Music

Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico

• Duane Anderson, Vice President of Operations, School of American Research
• Cynthia Barber, Program Coordinator, Tamarind Institute
• Stephen Becker, Director, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• J. J. Brody, Research Curator, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology
• Cassie Bussma, Work/Study Student, Music Department, College of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico
• Christine Castillo, Work/Study Student, Music Department, College of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico
• Tom Dodson, Dean, College of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico
• Emile du Bois, Tour Coordinator, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
• Michael Hering, Director, Indian Arts Research Center, School of American Research
• Ellen McCullough-Brabson, Professor, Music Education, University of New Mexico
• Jessie Naranjo, Director of Historic Preservation, Santa Clara Pueblo Cultural Preservation Project, Santa Clara Pueblo
• George Rivera, Director, Pojoaque Pueblo Poeh Center and Museum, Pojoaque Pueblo
• Sarah Schlanger, Curator of Archeology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 
• Douglas Schwartz, President, School of American Research
• Joyce Szabo, Assistant Professor, Art and Art History Department, University of New Mexico
• James B. Wright, Professor of Librarianship, Director, Fine Arts Library, University of New Mexico

San Francisco, California

• Benjamin Brinner, Assistant Professor, Music Department, University of California, Berkeley 
• Dewey Grumpier, Associate Professor, San Francisco Art Institute
• Mark Johnson, Assistant Professor and Gallery Director, San Francisco State University
• Fred Martin, Dean of Academic Affairs Emeritus, San Francisco Art Institute
• Jeremy Morgan, Associate Professor, San Francisco Art Institute
• Kathryn Reasoner, Director of Extension and Summer Programs, San Francisco Art Institute
• Moira Roth, Tresethen Professor of Art History, Mills College
• Ronald Takaki, Professor of Ethnic Studies, Asian American Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley
• Larry Thomas, Dean of Academic Affairs, San Francisco Art Institute
• Carlos Villa, Professor and Director of Multicultural Programs, San Francisco Art Institute 
• Gerald Vizenor, Professor, Native American Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley
• Oily Wilson, Chair, Music Department, University of California, Berkeley

Specialists Travel to China from the United States and South and Southeast Asia

The Center considers the period from 1990 through spring 1995 as the first stage of the Joint Plan on Yunnan Nationalities Cultures. During this first stage, the emphasis has been on theoretical and conceptual approaches to cultural conservation of the living traditions of Yunnan’s minority nationalities. We hope that further funding will enable the Center, and our counterparts in China, to continue the project through a more programmatic and practical second stage. 

During the first stage, fifteen specialists from the United States and Asia traveled to China to consult on formal projects established by the Center with the Yunnan Nationalities Museum, the Yunnan Nationalities Institute, the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, and the Mentorship/Apprenticeship Program. To complement their activities with these primary institutions, the specialists also met with representatives from secondary institutions—institutions with which the Center has considered formal programs —including the Yunnan Institute of Arts, the Yunnan Folk Arts Center, the Yunnan Painting Academy, Yunnan University, and the Yunnan Provincial Museum.

The inclusion of an Asia-to-Asia dimension, which has sent Asians from Indonesia, the Philippines, and India to China, since the project’s inception, and this has been crucial to its success. Through grants that supplement the Ford Foundation’s support, given by the Asian Cultural Council and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, triangulation—the joining of specialists from the United States, China, and elsewhere in Asia—has been made possible.

The first stage of the Yunnan Project has been made up of two eighteen-month grants each from The Ford Foundation, the ACC, and the United Board. Under this funding, the initial professional visits of Americans and Asians to China focused on establishing relationships between specialists in Yunnan and those from abroad, assessing the needs of each program, traveling to the villages to provide the visiting specialists with an insitu look at the nationalities cultures, and having the American and Asian specialists offer suggestions and models for the Chinese to use or alter as applicable.

The Center focused first on the Yunnan Nationalities Museum because of the immediacy of its demands and time constraints. In June 1991, Heather Peters, a specialist in anthropology, archeology, and museology from the University of Pennsylvania, and Lo-yi Chan, an architect at Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen, met with planning officials for the proposed museum and reported back to the Center on its planning to date.

In May 1993, Stephen Becker, Director, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and Laurel Kendall, Curator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, also worked primarily with the Yunnan Nationalities Museum, meeting with members of the preparatory committee and staff. In addition to meeting with representatives from all of the above primary and secondary institutions, Becker traveled north and west of Kunming, visiting Bai and Naxi villages, Dali, and the Stone Forest (a developed tourist site), and Kendall visited villages southwest of Kunming.

In June 1993, Center Director Chou Wen-chung and Jose Maceda, Professor Emeritus, University of the Philippines, both participated in exchanges in China focusing on professional arts education, the humanities, and training in rural areas, in general, and nationalities music and its future, in particular. Both Chou and Maceda spent a substantial amount of time on the development of village programs to identify outstanding nationality artists who could pass on local nationality arts traditions to younger members of the village communities. They also worked on drafting curricula, in conjunction with the Yunnan Nationalities Institute (N.I.), for a proposed arts department the N.I. had been seeking to establish for a decade.

The Asia-to-Asia component of the project continued in December 1993 when Jyotindra Jain, Senior Director, Crafts Museum in New Delhi, spent three weeks with the staff of the Yunnan Nationalities Museum. Jain focused on exhibition design and museum education, especially outreach programs. Jain also spent several days in the countryside, meeting with village cultural workers and artists to encourage their participation in the museum and its projects.

The husband-and-wife team of Samang Sam, Executive Director of the Cambodian Network Council, and Chan Moly Sam, a choreographer and dancer trained in the traditions of Khmer court dance and Javanese dance, followed later that December. The Sams, who have dedicated their lives to reclaiming and developing Khmer culture, discussed with Chinese educators the parallel issues currently facing both Chinese and Cambodian artists and indicated to them some of the strategies being implemented by Cambodian cultural leaders to address these issues.

As a follow-up to his very successful May 1993 visit, Jose Maceda returned to Yunnan as the second eighteen-month grant took effect. Maceda held lectures and discussions at both the Yunnan Art Institute and the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, focusing on nationalities folk music and fieldwork methodologies. Maceda also addressed the potential for establishing links between cultural conservation and economic development, using the Philippines and other countries in Southeast Asia, which have enjoyed immense success in this effort, as examples.

In April 1994, Sal Murgiyanto, Deputy Rector for Administration at the Jakarta Arts Institute, and I Made Bandem, Director of the Indonesian College of the Arts, traveled to villages in Luxi County to study the living traditions and natural environments of the nationalities. Following their village trips, the two consulted with administrators and faculty at the Mentorship/ Apprenticeship Program and the newly established arts department at the Yunnan Nationalities Institute. While at the Nationalities Institute, they drafted a working curriculum to which subsequent specialists have since contributed.

Also in April, Francisco Feliciano, President of The Asian School of Music, Worship, and the Arts, traveled to Yunnan to work with the Yunnan Nationalities Institute on the arts department curriculum. Feliciano’s many years of experience in this area made him a natural choice to lead intensive discussions with individual educators and the committee responsible for the department’s design. Feliciano submitted a module for teaching music performance and composition to the committee and then extensively demonstrated it for them.

The fall of 1994 saw the exchange of the final two American specialists. In November, J. J. Brody, Professor Emeritus, Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico, and Research Curator, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, visited several museums in Yunnan—both Kunming and the villages —to compare various collections, exhibit designs, and philosophies to gain a better understanding of what was needed at the Yunnan Nationalities Museum. Brody also worked with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences and the Nationalities Museum to design inter-institutional projects—consistently an underlying goal of the Yunnan Project—to build richer resources on nationalities arts.

In December 1994, Carl Wolz, Professor of Dance, Japan Women’s College of Physical Education, met with members of the planning committee for the newly approved arts department of the Nationalities Institute to create a dance program for the arts department that would be appropriate for students from nationality villages. He also evaluated tenured and newly hired teachers and advised the school’s administrators on ways to institute an innovative teacher-training program.

At the completion of the two eighteen-month grants, in May 1995, the Center conducted an eleven-day Review Session to evaluate the progress to date, to involve all the participating Yunnan institutions, and to set an agenda for future work. (See p. 17 for “Center Holds a Review of the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project.”)

Center Holds a Review of the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project

In May 1995, the Center held a Review Session to evaluate the work conducted in Yunnan to date, to involve all the participating Yunnan institutions, and to set an agenda for future work in Yunnan with minority nationalities cultures. Designed and organized by the Center, the Review Session was supported in large part by The Ford Foundation, with additional funding for Southeast and South Asian participation from the Asian Cultural Council and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. Seventeen specialists in the arts from the United States, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India attended the Review Session, supported by the foundation contributions, including Advisory Council member Gerald Adelmann; and thirteen more participated on a self funded basis, including Advisory Council members Waldemar A. Nielsen, Helen Walker Spencer, and Audrey Topping. The entire Center staff also participated.

Events were held over an eleven-day period, and included a three-day trip to Xishuangbanna, where all participants traveled to remote villages of Jinuo, Hani, Yao, and Kemu nationalities. Back in Kunming, the group visited the Nationalities Museum (still in progress), the Nationalities Institute, the Academy of Social Sciences, the Mentorship/ Apprenticeship Program, the Provincial Museum, the Folk Arts Center, the Institute of Arts, the Nationalities Village, and other sites of cultural or historic interest. Full-day sessions were held to review all the projects under the Joint Plan for Yunnan Nationalities Cultures; and round-table discussions were held to discuss the plans for the new Nationalities Museum, the curriculum for the newly established arts department at the Nationalities Institute, the Fieldwork/Research Group, and the attempts to set up a viable mentoring program. The Center’s next newsletter will be devoted to this event. The following people attended the Review Session:

From the United States

• Gerald Adelmann, President, Canal Corridor Association, Chicago
• Stephen Becker, Director, Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures, Santa Fe
• Barry Bergey, Deputy Director, Folk Arts Program, National Endowment for the Arts
• Amina Dickerson, Vice President for Education, Chicago Historical Society
• Tessie Naranjo, Director of Historic Preservation, Santa Clara Pueblo Cultural Preservation Project
• Martin Prekop, Dean, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh
• Frank Proschan, Associate Scholar of Semiotics, Adjunct Associate Professor, Indiana University, Bloomington
• George Rivera, Director, Pojoaque Pueblo Poeh Center and Museum
• Paul Smith, Director Emeritus, American Craft Museum, New York City
• Larry Thomas, Academic Dean, San Francisco Art Institute
• Judy Van Zile, Professor of Dance, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
• Tom Wilson, Former Executive Director, Southwest Museum

From Asia

• Francisco Feliciano, President, Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music, Manila, Philippines
• Sal Murgiyanto, Senior Lecturer, Jakarta Arts Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia
• Jutta Neubauer-Jain, Art Historian and Exhibition Curator, New Delhi, India
• Jyotindra Jain, Senior Director, Crafts Museum, New Delhi, India
• Ramon Santos, Professor of Composition, Theory, and Musicology, University of the Philippines

Observers

• Carolyn George, Photographer/Dancer, New York City
• Chiang Ching, Dancer, Stockholm, Sweden
• Yi-an Chou, Floral Designer, New York City
• Mingder Chung, Program Representative, Asian Cultural Council, Taiwan
• Sana Musasama, New York City
• Marcia K. Nielsen, Educator, New York City
• Waldemar A. Nielsen, President, Waldemar A. Nielsen, Inc., New York City
• Anthony J. Saich, Representative for China, The Ford Foundation, Beijing, China
• Helen Walker Spencer, Fund Raiser, Project Originations, Incorporated, New York City
• Mark Studdert, Lawyer, London, England
• Carolyn Taylor, Lawyer, London, England
• Audrey Topping, Photojournalist/Documentary Filmmaker, New York
• Yinyin Zeng-Saich, Associate Professor, Central Drama Academy, Beijing, China, and Sinological Institute, Leiden, Netherlands

Minority Arts in Yunnan

In December 1990, Center Director Chou Wen-chung traveled to Yunnan Province, at the initiation and with the support of The Ford Foundation, to explore the feasibility of carrying out a cultural project on the minority nationalities of Yunnan. The following are edited excerpts from Chou’s report on his findings and his conclusions:

A major characteristic of Chinese civilization is China’s incorporation of many minority nationalities since the beginning of its written history. Many of these minority cultures interacted with Han culture throughout the ages, influencing the development of China’s arts. Yunnan, in southwestern China, has the largest number of minority nationalities in any one province—twenty-four* and numerous subdivisions. One-third of Yunnan’s population is minority and is distributed over two-thirds of the province’s area.

While historically Yunnan nationalities may not have contributed as much to Chinese culture as some of those in the northern and far western provinces, they have, in turn, been much less influenced by Han culture than other minorities. In modern times Yunnan has experienced only two periods of limited exposure to other cultures: when the province fell under the so-called “sphere of influence” of France at the very end of the 19th century, and when Kunming became the staging center for military aid from the United States during the Second World War. By contrast, since the 1930s, the music, dance, and visual arts of the southwestern nationalities have been popular throughout China and have regularly been a source of borrowing for creative artists in the mainstream

At a time when the pace of modernization in Yunnan is quickening and tourism is spreading, study and preservation of these artistic traditions are urgently needed. The fast-changing taste and waning interest on the part of the young further demand a measure of revitalization of these traditions as well. As China strives to achieve a modern artistic outlook, the continued appropriation by its creative artists of the superficial features found in these minority traditions cries out for an in-depth interaction between the latter and the much-Westernized Han artistic heritage of today.

* Ed. note: Following publication of the 1990 census, the Man nationality is now included among Yunnan’s recognized minority nationalities, bringing the number usually cited to twenty-five.

Observations on Conditions for Minority Cultures

1. The need for preserving cultural traditions runs the whole gamut of localities, from the most remote and therefore the most pristine, to the most accessible and consequently the most corrupted. And erosion is accelerating. Local professionals use the term qiangjiu (rescue) to emphasize the urgent need for preservation.

2. When the Chinese speak of qiangjiu, they mean qiangjiu wenwu (rescue relics), not “rescuing the living art.” This reflects a Han mentality that is hardly excusable today, especially among those who work on behalf of the nationalities.

3. The answer clearly is not in merely moving artifacts— whether of artistic or historic value—to a central location, such as an urban museum. That would only further erode local traditions and would fail to recognize these cultures as “living.” Nor should any solution interfere with the much-needed improvement in local lifestyles. A multifaceted approach through planning, consultation, and education is needed—as numerous American communities have learned in recent decades.

4. However, in spite of an inherent conflict between the need to preserve and the pressure to modernize, we must recognize that it is equally urgent that measures be taken to improve the economy and raise the standard of living. The question is how to plan for the preservation of traditions, while still attracting foreign investment and tourism.

5. In any event, a viable resolution to the question of preservation would have to elicit the support of local authorities and interest on the part of the young population. Additionally, it should attract the commitment of major provincial cultural institutions.

Intellectual Climate in China Since the Tiananmen Events

In December 1990, on his first trip to China since the events of June 1989, Center Director Chou Wen-chung retraced the steps of a 1987 China trip, undertaken to look at the climate for intellectuals and artists of that time. The 1990 Ford Foundation supported trip began in Yunnan Province’s capital city of Kunming and the rural area of Luxi County, where Chou was exploring the feasibility of designing a Center project on Yunnan’s minority nationalities. Following the Yunnan visit, Chou traveled to Xi’an and then repeated the earlier Chengdu, Beijing, and Shanghai itinerary, focusing on meetings with painters, writers, musicians, and scholars. The purpose of the visit was to assess the effects of Tiananmen and its aftermath on the intellectual and artistic atmosphere in some of China’s major cities. The following are edited excerpts from Chou’s report on the “Intellectual Climate in China Since the Tiananmen Events”:

The Continuing Crisis in Chinese Culture

The observations in this report, ultimately aimed at both American and Chinese readers, will be more meaningful if considered in a Chinese historical context. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that the ability to assimilate foreign cultures is a fundamental characteristic of Chinese civilization. The influx of foreign influence has, however, always been effectively counterbalanced by the capacity of Chinese civilization to reshape ideas from other cultures on its own terms. This usually happens over a long period of disintegration and amalgamation—at a time of rebirth in Chinese history. The best-known example of such a time of cultural transformation is the period leading up to the Tang dynasty—a dynasty with a culture that was neither ancient Chinese nor Central or South Asian.

The most recent such period in China’s history has, perhaps, been unfolding for over one hundred fifty years now. For three-quarters of a century, symbolically from the Opium Wars of 1839 to 1860 through the so-called “Open Door” policy advocated by the United States in 1898 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, China experienced some of the worst political and economic exploitation and racial humiliation in its history. As might well be expected, there was a concurrent process of the disintegration of an already decaying culture.

It is unfortunate that China’s first exposure to modern Western culture should have taken place in such oppressive circumstances. The result was predictable. It inspired two powerful and diametrically opposed reactions: cultural xenophobia, on the one hand, and complete Westernization, on the other. The ensuing conflicts in the arts between these two extremes have never been resolved. Worse, no middle ground has taken hold in the Chinese mind throughout the past century.

The true ” cultural revolution” in China was not the political Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, but the intellectual consequences of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. These were the first tangible manifestations of China’s cultural conflict with the West—the first attempt at initiating a movement toward a modern Chinese culture. But this movement failed in the arts. There was too little time for artistic retrospection before China was caught up in further struggles for survival: a quarter-century of civil war, eight years of Japanese invasion, and the Communist revolution.

During these decades three trends evolved in the arts. On one extreme there was a complete disregard for contemporary Western arts and only a rudimentary imitation of traditional Western arts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The emphasis was exclusively on technique, without regard to cultural context. On the other extreme, there was a mindless indulgence in the status quo of China’s traditional arts as they were found at the collapse of the Qing dynasty. Between these opposite directions there was an attempted synthesis that was “neither fish nor fowl “—or as the Chinese saying would have it “hu zhong bu xi” [literally, “neither Chinese nor Western”]. This approach led to the rendering of Chinese folk themes in Western styles and techniques.

An example of the first trend was the widespread interest in oil painting in the nineteenth-century European style. For the opposing trend, there was the continued popularity of the so-called Peking Opera. Even more representative of this tendency was the revival, in the early 1930s, of the music for qin (Chinese zither) without really understanding the meaning or the significance of its aesthetics. The third trend could be seen by the common practice in the past half-century of rendering Chinese folk songs with an overlay of conventional tonal harmony of the West. Another example would be the recasting of minority nationalities’ dance movements in to the framework of Western classical ballet.

In short, there was not enough understanding of Western culture or knowledge of modern artistic concepts on the part of Chinese artists to revitalize a Chinese culture that would remain true to itself while at the same time benefit from the Western experience. Meanwhile the tradition of Chinese culture was being chipped away piece by piece by the processes of a so-called “modernization” and “Westernization.” Even then, in the 1920s and 1930s, these were fashionable terms among intellectuals.

After the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the same trends and processes  continued—and on a much broader scale. For the next thirty years, there was a dominant Russian influence and the strict constraints of Communist ideology. Fortunately, this period was also marked by a considerably higher level of professionalism than before and a substantial increase in the training of talented artists, especially in the performing arts.

The reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China in 1979 marked the real beginning of China’s exposure to modern Western arts—a crucial moment in China’s cultural history. By 1983 the fruition of this exposure manifested itself with the emergence of a substantial number of young Chinese composers, painters, and filmmakers who could reasonably match the work of young American artists in their own fields.

A few years later, by the time of the Tiananmen tragedy, many of these young Chinese artists were studying or working in the West, attracting considerable attention. Their work, however impressive, is nonetheless imitative and barely hints at a search for oneself. These artists are praised in the West often on the basis of certain Eurocentric concepts of what modern art is, or according to what some Westerners regard as the way new Chinese art “should” be. Back home, they are evaluated either according to politics or to the degree of attention they attract in the West.

This has hardly been a healthy ambience in which to nurture a renewed culture in China that reaches beyond its old self—long in stagnation—or becomes more than a shadow of the West. Given China’s history, this is more or less to be expected as part of its growing pains. Symbolically, and at a tragic cost that June night in 1989—ten years after the beginning of the first sustained cultural exchange between China and the United States —an alarm sounded, not only for diplomatic relations, but also for a thoughtful reexamination of the arts relations between these two cultures flanking the Pacific.

What China Needs to Do

The Chinese leadership maintains that the single most urgent task for China is to achieve a superior economy through the processes of modernization. Everything else is subordinate to this focus. The reality will no doubt prove to be a little more complex than that. To achieve the goals of modernization as set by China’s leaders, a “modern mentality,” which still eludes the masses, will have to develop. Achieving this, in turn, depends on a “modern” culture, which, in all honesty, China does not yet possess. Perhaps what is needed is some conclusion to the long cycle of interaction with Western culture that was initiated so painfully in the mid-nineteenth century. China has to comprehend and absorb modern ideas from the West in their cultural context, but also must invigorate its own cultural traditions in order to provide a solid foundation for modern development. Without these two steps China can only copy or borrow from the West. Having taken these steps, China would then be able to evolve its own modern experience in its own environment and emerge out of the shadow of both the United States and the Soviet Union. All of this is to say that as crucial as economics may appear to be to China at this time, culture is at least equally important.

United States-China Relations

Long-term U.S.-China relations do not rely on political and economic interactions alone. Efforts in these areas have brought about, and will continue to bring about, immediate but often temporary results. For the longterm future, however, efforts in cultural interaction will be indispensable to the success of the relationship. The Tiananmen tragedy should serve as a moment for introspection for Americans as well as Chinese. During the ten years leading to that moment, while we proudly excited the Chinese people with our concepts of democracy and market economy, did we make a conscious effort to sufficiently impart to them the cultural underpinnings on which democratic principles rely? Had there been exchanges in culture and the arts approaching the magnitude of those in the political, financial, and commercial spheres?

Americans have historically been regarded by the Chinese as their friends among Westerners. This is obviously not because the Chinese believed in John Hay’s “Open Door” policy, nor because a very small percentage of Chinese profited from working for or trading with the American business community. It was largely because many of the Chinese intellectual leaders studied in this country. Today, following Tiananmen, perhaps Americans will at last recognize the need for intensive interaction with China in the arts, providing China with experiences we have had in evolving our modern society so as to encourage China to develop its own set of modernizing experiences. Our healthy long-term relations with China depend on a genuinely modern Chinese society, which, in turn, depends on the development of a modern culture of its own.

Larger Implications

Successful cultural exchanges with China will have larger implications as well. First of all, what China has been going through culturally is less an ideological phenomenon than it is an Asian and post-colonial one. Its struggle serves as a colossal prototype of the processes of modernization and cultural integration that all Asian nations are experiencing. Secondly, successful interaction between the United States and China will produce an impact on the whole Pacific region. Many countries in the area have already initiated their own exchange programs, and yet at the same time are attracted to projects of a broader nature between the two giants on the opposite shores of the Pacific. Finally, in this country, we must also be prepared for domestic cultural changes that are bound to accelerate as the predicted demographic shifts unfold during the next three-quarters of a century, leading to the moment when the United States will become a nation without a racial majority. Exchanges with China will offer opportunities for Americans to learn about cultural interaction in depth and exposure to a society of vastly different environment and tradition.

Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project: Cooperating Institutions and Individuals

Over the course of the five years the Center has been working to develop, design, and carry out the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project, we have had contact with innumerable institutions and individuals throughout Yunnan Province. Reflected are key cultural, educational, artistic, scholarly, and governmental leaders, both in Kunming and in the outlying prefectures, counties, and villages. With some we forged cooperative links that resulted in major projects; with others, although we explored possibilities, circumstances prevented the development of collaborative activities. We hope to include many of these organizations and/or individuals in the Joint Plan for Yunnan Nationalities Cultures in our future planning. The following is a partial —by no means comprehensive—list of those organizations and individuals with which/whom we have worked most closely since 1990. We are grateful for their efforts, dedication, energy, and ideas. The institutions cited often also provided in-kind support without which the projects would have been greatly hampered or impossible to carry out successfully.

Institutions With Which the Center Has Formal Programs

Nationalities Affairs Commission of Yunnan Province

• Ma Lisan (Yi), Director
• Wang Zhengfang (Hani), former Deputy Director
• Ma Huaqing (Hui), Deputy Director
• Lei Yintian, Deputy Director
• Zhang Nin, Director, Foreign Affairs
• Gao Yunming, Vice Director, International Foundation Relations
• Chen Jianming, Assistant to the Director

Yunnan Nationalities Institute

• Zhao Jiawen (Bai), President
• Pu Tongjin (Yi), Vice President
• Huang Hulkun, Vice President
• Di Huayi, Associate Professor, Director of Education Administration 
• Hu Maoxiu, former Director, Foreign Affairs Office
• Zhou Mingqiang, Director, Foreign Affairs Office
• Yang Dejun (Bai), Research Fellow, Art Research Division; Founder, Yunnan Nationalities Institute Museum
• Yang Jun (Bai), Associate Professor of Nationality Art
• Wang Sidai (Yi), Associate Professor, Department of Chinese
• Shi Yuzu, Associate Professor, Arts Department
• Chen Zhengqiang (Jingpo), Research Fellow, Literature Research Division
• Gao Lishi (Bai), Associate Research Fellow, Yunnan Nationalities Research Institute
• He Shaoying (Naxi), Research Fellow, Yunnan Nationalities Research Institute
• Huang Minchu, Photographer, Nationalities Institute Museum
• Jin Xiaobai (Dai), Assistant Research Fellow, Nationalities Institute Museum
• Li Bo, Assistant Interpreter, Foreign Affairs Office
• Li Danhe, Dean, Foreign Language Department
• Li Weixin, Secretary, Arts Department, Preparatory Committee
• Luo Haining, Lecturer of Nationality Education; Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Research Institute
• Ma Yisheng, Director, Nationalities Institute Museum
• Shi Rui (Jingpo), Research Fellow, Jingpo Literature Research Division
• Tang Yebi (Dai), Assistant Professor of Dance
• Wu Lingyun, Professor of Dai Language and Culture; Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationalities Research Institute
• Xie Chongshu, Associate Professor, Arts Department
• Yang Chaoqun, Deputy Section Head, Academic Affairs Section
• You Li, Party Secretary

The Yunnan Nationalities Museum

• Gao Zongyu, Director
• Xie Mohua (Bai), Deputy Director
• Yin Shaoting, Deputy Director
• Bai Yubao, Staff
• Dong Xun, Staff
• Gu Weilin, Staff
• He Yaobo, Staff
• Jiang Zhen, Staff
• Jie Shunbao, Staff
• Li Rui, Staff
• Yang Bing, Staff
• Yang Li, Staff
• Yang Songhai, Staff
• Yang Xiao, Staff
• Yu Hanjiao, Staff

Mentorship/Apprenticeship Program

• Tian Feng, Director
• Wang Zhengfang, Senior Advisor
• Li Jinghua, Director, Department of Research and Exhibition
• Liu Sujuan, Deputy Director
• Pu Fazhen, Staff
• Pu Jiufen, Staff
• Zhang Qi, Staff
• Zhang Shilin, Staff

Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences

• He Yaohua, President
• Tang Chenjie, Vice President
• Deng Qiyao, Director, Nationality Literature Research Institute
• Duan Yuming, Deputy Director, Institute of History
• Feng Zhao, Interpreter/Research Assistant
• Guo Dalie, Director, Institute of Ethnological Studies
• Guo Jing, Deputy Director, Institute of History
• Mac Yuejun, Research Fellow, Film and Video Division, Information and Reference Center
• Jiang Hong, Deputy Director, Foreign Affairs Office
• Li Xianxu, Director, Information and Reference Center; Staff Archivist
• Li Yaohan, Institute of Chuxiong Yi Culture
• Li Zuanxu (Bai), former Director, Nationality Literature Research Institute
• Wang Qinghua, Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Ethnological Studies
• Wang Shuwu (Bai), Deputy Director, Institute of Ethnological Studies
• Zuo Yasha, Director, Foreign Affairs Office

Government of Yunnan Province

• He Zhiqiang, Governor
• Pu Chaozhu, Party Secretary General
• Chen Liying, Vice Governor
• Dai Guanglu, Vice Governor
• Yang Jianqiang (Bai), Vice Governor (in charge of Nationalities Affairs)
• Wang Tingzhen, Mayor of Kunming
• Ma Lisan (Yi), Director
• Wang Zhengfang, Deputy Director, Nationalities Commission, Yunnan People’s Congress
• Yin Jun* (Bai), Chairman and Executive Secretary General, Yunnan People’s Congress; President, Yunnan Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries
• Zhao Tingguang* (Yao), Vice Chairman, Yunnan People’s Political Consultative Conference; President, Yunnan Minority Nationalities Studies Society
• Jin Cankun, Deputy Division Chief, Foreign Affairs and Economics Division
• Lei Yaomin, Secretary, General Office of the Yunnan Provincial Government
• Liang Jinquan,* Member, Provincial Party Standing Committee; Party Propaganda Chief; President, Yunnan Association for Cultural Exchanges with Foreign Countries
• Ma Zhanlun, Director, General Office of the Yunnan People’s Political Consultative Conference
• Peng Rendong, Head, Yunnan Province Foreign Affairs Office
• Zheng Feng, Delegate, Yunnan People’s Political Consultative Conference

• * Honorary Advisor, Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project

Organizations With Which the Center Has Worked

Yunnan Folk Arts Center

• Gao Tianyi, Curator and Director
• Zhu Zi, Deputy Director
• Bai Qi, Chief, Operations Division
• Zhao Yaoxin (Yi), Department Chief, Visual Arts Department
• Huang Lin, Senior Advisor, Music
• Chen Li, Deputy Department Chief, Visual Arts Department
• Dai Yuru, Fine Arts Consultant
• Li Xiaoqing, Curator, Decorative Lantern Division
• Lu Ying, Fine Arts Advisor

Yunnan Institute of Arts

• Zhang Jianzhong, President; Vice Chairman, Yunnan Artists’ Association
• Na Shihua (Yi), Director, Administrative Affairs
• Wang Fuling, Vice President
• Chen Zuji, Director, Yunnan Nationality Folk Arts Research Institute
• Zhou Kaimo, Associate Professor of Musicology and Composition; Deputy Director, Yunnan Nationality Art Research Institute
• He Yongkun, Chairman, Commercial Arts Division
• Li Jian, Research Fellow, Dance
• Li Jinghuan, former Director, Yunnan Nationality Art Research Institute
• Li Xiaoming, Director, Department of Fine Arts
• Lin Di, Research Fellow, Visual Arts
• Liu Xiaogeng, Assistant Professor of Composition
• Song Yang, Tenor
• Sun Weike, Deputy Director, Foreign Affairs Office
• Wang Lu, Director, Foreign Affairs Office
• Wang Shenqhudi, Associate Professor, Drama
• Wen Jie, Research Fellow, Music
• Xu Xiang, Director, Performing Troupe
• Yang Fang (Hani), Professor of Nationality Music
• Ye Gongxian, former President
• Yu Xiwu, Research Fellow
• Zhang Qilong, Research Fellow, Visual Arts
• Zhang Maoning, Chairman, Department of Dance
• Zhang Mingqin, English Teacher/Translator
• Zhang Xingrong, Professor of Music

Yunnan Painting Academy

• Wang Jinyuan, President
• Zeng Xiaofeng, Professional Artist; Member, Chinese Artists’ Association

Yunnan Province Education Commission

• Hai Song, Chairman
• Ma Youliang, Vice Chairman
• Yang Chonglong, Deputy Director
• Zhu Wenhua, Deputy Director
• Wang Qianghua, Deputy Division Chief General Education Division
• Li Yuan, Section Chief Foreign Affairs Section
• Han Yuexin, Director, Foreign Affairs Office
• Li Danjie, Program Officer, Foreign Affairs Office
• Lu Bingyan, Deputy Bureau Chief, Arts Education Bureau

Yunnan Design Institute

• Rao Weichun, Chief Architect
• Yin Zuoyao, Senior Architect
• Mao Kun, Architect
• Wang Xianlin, Senior Engineer
• Yang Zhizhong, Senior Engineer

Yunnan University

• Zhang Wenxun, Director, Southwestern Border Region Nationality Economic and Cultural Research Center
• Li Zixian, Deputy Director, Southwestern Border Region Nationality Economic and Cultural Research Center
• Yang Shouchuan, Deputy Director, Southwestern Border Region Nationality Economic and Cultural Research Center

Yunnan Association for International Educational Exchange

• Han Yuexin, Secretary General

Regional Organizations (in alphabetical order)

Chuxiong Autonomous Prefecture

• Chuxiong Autonomous Prefecture Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Lufeng Natural History Museum

Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture

• Dali County Government
• Dali Regional Museum
• Dali Municipal Museum
• Xiaguan Provincial Museum
• Weishan Yi /Hui Autonomous County

Honghe Autonomous Prefecture

• Luxi County Government
• Chen Senlong, former Mayor
• Chen Yanhua, former Deputy Director
• Wang Minglong, Acting Mayor
• Cao Chao, Deputy Mayor
• Wang Lishou, Deputy Mayor
• Shi Chaoxing, County Party Secretary General
• Wan Jianxiong, Deputy Office Director, County General Office
• Yang Jicai, Bureau Chief, County Bureau of Culture

Shiping County Government

• Pu Qiaoyan (Yi), Mayor
• Zhang Jun (Yi), Executive Deputy Mayor
• Zhang Chaoping (Dai), Deputy Mayor

Lijiang Prefecture

• Lijiang Prefectural Museum
• Dongba Institute

Simao Prefecture

• Simao Zhen (town) Government
• Bai Cunde (Hani), Vice Governor
• Shen Jie, Deputy Prefecture Secretary General
• Xu Yong’an (Yi), Deputy Director, Prefecture Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Mojiang Autonomous County Government
• Zhao Jiaming (Hani), Mayor
• Zhang Ke’ai, Bureau Chief, County Bureau of Culture
• Pu’er County Government
• Ma Jiabao, Mayor

Yuxi Prefecture

• Yuanjian Autonomous County Government
• Bai Zhonghua (Yi), Deputy Mayor
• Liu Shizhu, Deputy Mayor
• Li Mingfu (Dai), Director, Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Wang Meizhen, Bureau Chief, County Bureau of Culture
• Xie Guangting, Director, County Culture Center
• Tonghai County Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Tonghai County Government

Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture

• Xishuangbanna Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefectural Government
• Dao Aimin (Dai), Governor
• Li Yong (Dai), Vice Governor
• Dao Jin’an (Dai), Director, Prefecture Nationalities Affairs Commission
• Qian Zhan, Deputy Bureau Chief, Prefecture Bureau of Culture
• Yi Xiaokun (Dai), Office Director, Prefecture Government General Office

Organizations the Center Has Contacted

Yunnan Nationalities Painting Academy

• Lu Denggu, Vice President
• Yao Yongmao (Yi), Vice President
• Zhang Zhongqi, Member

Yunnan Provincial Museum

• Li Kunsheng, Director
• Li Yi, Deputy Director
• Tian Xiaowen, Deputy Department Chief, Department of Education for the Masses
• Xu Kangning, Deputy Department Chief, Department of Education for the Masses
• Zhang Zengqi, Research Fellow
• Zhu Baotian, Specialist on Dongba Culture

Department of Culture of Yunnan Province

• Gu Qun, Foreign Affairs Section
• Li Gaopin, Representative for Honghe Prefecture
• Li Zhengrong, Deputy Director
• Liu Shirong, Head, General Office
• Qiu Xuanchong, Director, Cultural Relics Division
• Sun Wei, Deputy Director

Travel and Tourism Administration of Yunnan Province

• Li Lu’an, Director
• Tong Jiuru, Deputy Director
• Chen Keqin, Deputy Section Chief, International Marketing and Development Section
• Bureau of Landscaping and Parks of Kunming City
• Ma Jieyun, Director
• Wang Jinbao, Section Chief, Foreign Affairs Section

Kunming Lake Dianchi National Recreation/Tourism Region

• He Jun, Manager
• Luo Fuliang, Manager
• Hu Zefei, Deputy Director, Kunming Lake Dianchi National Recreation/Tourism Region Administrative Committee

Ethnic Folk Culture Villages Park

• Huang Bin, Deputy General Manager
• Wei Fei, Manager, Yi Hamlet

China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Yunnan Branch

• Li Biyu, Chairman

Chinese Dancers’ Association, Yunnan Branch

• Dao Meilan, Chairman
• Ma Huixian, Association Member: Choreographer

Yunnan Dao Meilan International Center of Art

• Dao Meilan, Chairman, Dancers’ Association
• Wang Shiye, Deputy Director, Composer

Chinese Musicians’ Association, Yunnan Branch

• Huang Hong, Chairman

Yunnan Yi Nationalities Studies Society

• Ma Lisan, President

Yunnan Nationalities Theoretical Studies Society

• Wang Zhengfang, Vice President

Yunnan Association for Cultural Exchanges with Foreign Countries

• Liang Jinquan, President
• Liu Shirong, Deputy Secretary General
• Gao Tianyi, Member, Executive Council

Yunnan Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries

• Yin Jun, President

Yunnan International Cultural Exchange Company

• Wang Lirong, General Manager

Nationalities Economic and Cultural Development Company

• Shen Qirong, General Manager

Yunnan International Non-Government Organizations Society

• Guo Jingming, Director

O’Neill Teachers Exchange in Arts Education

In 1985, the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange was in the middle of a three year project to compare arts education in China and the United States at the early childhood, pre-collegiate (elementary and secondary school), and college levels. In collaboration with Harvard Project Zero in this country and the Ministry of Culture and State Education Commission in China, the project relied on theoretical and scholarly studies conducted in both countries by education specialists and administrators.

While the exchanges carried out included many disciplines and involved a broad spectrum of educators, the Center identified a sector of the arts education community that was not being addressed—that of the classroom arts teachers. As a result, the Center, in consultation with the State Education Commission in Beijing, developed an exchange plan that would enable three two -member teams of Chinese arts teachers to visit the United States for three weeks each and three two-member teams of American arts teachers to visit China for three weeks each. These teachers of music and visual arts, chosen from a pool of applicants, would be selected on the basis of their excellence as classroom teachers, their adaptability to individuals and cultures other than their own, and their ability to share their international experience with their peers upon their return home.

This innovative program received the generous support needed from George and Abby O’Neill. 

Three teams—two Chinese and one American—had already completed their travel, and one American team held plane tickets for China, when the events leading up to the political turmoil of spring 1989 came to a head and all was put on hold.

In August 1990, when the Center resumed exchange work with China, we undertook a feasibility study for the development of a project in Yunnan Province. The focus of this project was the continuation and development of the traditional arts and cultures of Yunnan’s minority nationalities (to which most of this issue of the Newsletter is devoted). It became our hope that, at some point in the future, we could negotiate a program in Yunnan that would allow us to reinstate our exchange of classroom arts teachers between China and the United States.

In January 1993, an agreement was entered upon with the Yunnan Education Commission, and the O’Neill Teachers Exchange was officially transferred to Yunnan Province. Over the course of 1994, the Center was able to successfully carry out the remaining three sets of visits, extending this valuable project to classroom teachers in China’s southwest and America’s midwest.

Three Classroom Teacher Exchanges

During the period from spring through fall of 1994, the Center—in cooperation with the Yunnan Education Commission—carried out three teacher exchanges between the United States and China. In April 1994, Dawn Allan and Tom Wells, two music teachers from Minneapolis, Minnesota, traveled to Yunnan to visit elementary and secondary schools and teacher training institutes. Both Ms. Allan and Mr. Wells had been chosen as project participants, in 1988, by a distinguished panel of Minnesota arts educators, in consultation with the Center. Although events in China in 1989 had forced postponement of the project, the two teachers had remained ready throughout the intervening five years, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to carry out their planned trip.

When they finally got to go to Kunming they were very anxious to make the most of their time. While in Yunnan, they observed classroom teaching, and had the opportunity to speak with teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Ms. Allan, whose specialty is vocal education, gave demonstration lessons of singing classes; and Mr. Wells, who is a brass and jazz teacher, demonstrated his music teaching methods, including improvisation.

Late fall 1994, Mr. Chen Siming and Mr. Wu Xinwen, two visual arts teachers from Kunming, visited elementary and secondary schools in Minnesota and also sat in on painting classes at several local universities. Their hosts were the teachers who had been to China in April—Dawn Allan and Tom Wells. In Ms. Allan’s capacity as Director of the Teacher/Mentor Program for the Minneapolis Public Schools, she was able to arrange meetings for the Chinese visual arts teachers that would inform them on teacher-training approaches in the United States. Ms. Allan and Mr. Wells shared the responsibility of hosting the Chinese teachers, introducing them to radio/TV classes, dance classes, magnet schools, parenting centers, and band practice as well as many local sites that included the famous Mall of America and Walker Art Center. They also arranged for many local teachers and parents to entertain the Chinese teachers in their homes and accompanied them to a football game in the Dome.

To complete the entire two-way exchange program, Georgie Ann Daube-Grosse and Darlene Yeager, two visual arts teachers from Cincinnati, traveled to Kunming at the end of 1994. This visit was especially poignant because Ms. Grosse and Ms. Yeager had been ticketed to fly to China in May 1989. Their trip was canceled because of the dangerous situation in Beijing at that time; but these teachers never lost faith that they would some day travel to China. To finally make the journey was an emotional as well as educational experience for them.

Ms. Grosse, who is a Montessori specialist, and Ms. Yeager, a water colorist, are both prize-winning teachers with years of dedicated service. Among the schools they visited were two also visited by Dawn Allen and Tom Wells— the Kunming Normal School (a teachers college), where Wang Xincheng is headmaster, and the Normal School for Kindergarten Teachers, where Lu Chongbi is principal. Ms. Grosse and Ms. Yeager had been among the hosting teachers when visual arts teachers Mu Yunguang and Shuai Qi had spent three weeks in the United States in early 1989 on the Teacher Exchange. An emotional highlight of this 1994 reciprocal China trip was the appearance in Kunming of Mr. Mu—an elementary school teacher from Jilin Province, in the northeast of China. Mr. Mu had vowed to see the Ohio teachers again, and was not to be denied! He not only was reunited with them in Kunming, accompanying them to meet local painting teachers who were his personal contacts, he then traveled with the American teachers to Beijing and escorted them as they did some cultural sightseeing. They were extremely touched by his efforts on their behalf and by his personal dedication to making their visit to China as successful as possible.

For the Ohio visual arts teachers, the highlight of their visit seems to have been opportunities to demonstrate their own teaching methods. They were thrilled and gratified to be teaching young Chinese children and were touched by the enthusiastic responses they encountered. They have put together a video presentation on their trip and have already shown their slides to community audiences.

Observations

According to Mr. Feng Wei, a Chinese Ph.D. candidate in folklore, living in the U.S., who has been working as an intern at the Smithsonian Institution and served as interpreter for the Chinese art teachers when they visited Minnesota, the Chinese were most impressed by the dynamism of arts education in the U.S. and in the choices of programs offered to American students. They expressed particular interest in: (1) the diversity of school curricula; (2) teaching styles of art teachers; (3) student participation in classes; (4) workshops and field trips; and (5) ethnic cultural materials used in arts education.

Observations made by the Minnesota music and voice teachers on their visit to China were characterized by an awareness of how much more controlled an environment is the Chinese  classroom than the average American classroom. Although the Chinese expressed admiration for, and fascination with, the spontaneity and flexibility the Americans demonstrated in their teaching styles, they indicated they had very little intention of changing their own teaching methodology to coincide with the style of the Americans.

The Americans were somewhat surprised and certainly dismayed at the paucity of musical instruments and teaching resources available to the Chinese teachers. While they observed that China compares poorly with the United States in this regard, they were sensitive to the likelihood that today’s China probably compares favorably with the China of the past.

The Center’s Core Programs Continue Unabated

In fiscal year 1988-1989 the Center initiated a roster of Core Programs— projects designed to address some unexplored areas in U.S.-China cultural exchange. Since that time, Core Programs have been carried out in music, visual arts, arts education, and many other fields.

One of the most ambitious of the Center’s Core Programs is the Pacific Composers Project (PCP)—a direct consequence of the Center’s work on the summer 1990 Pacific Music Festival, held in Sapporo, Japan. The PCP has served as a resource center, has provided extensive consultation on Pacific music, and has inspired and collaborated on many concerts since its inception in 1991. (See “Pacific Composers Project,” p. 30, for details.)

During the period from 1990 to 1995, the following projects have been undertaken as part of the Center’s Core Programs:

• In conjunction with the International Institute for the Arts (IIA) and the Art Department and China Studies Institute at San Diego State University, in June and July 1991 the Center co-sponsored “The First Chinese Art Seminar Workshop.”

The workshop was designed and directed by Professor Sheng Tian Zheng, Vice President of IIA, with the strong support of Center Advisory Council member Waldemar A. Nielsen, Chairman of IIA. The workshop was created to provide Chinese artists an opportunity to network overseas, exchange information and ideas about contemporary Western art, and nurture their own cultural identity during a four-week residency in San Diego. The month-long program included visits to museums, talks with professionals in arts administration, studio time, a symposium on “Contemporary Chinese Art: Crisis and Perspective After the 1980s,” and a culminating exhibition, supported by the University, of works created by the participating artists.

On June 10. Chou Wen-chung met with the thirteen Chinese artists in attendance and challenged them with discussion on the future of Chinese arts and the influence of the West, lack of originality in contemporary Chinese art, the political situation in China, and their own goals and identities as artists attempting to succeed outside of China.

Transcriptions of the day’s meetings, which were conducted in Chinese, have been prepared by the Center for future reference and are available upon request.

With Chou Wen-chung as the moderator, the following artists participated in the workshop: Chen Danqing, Han Xin, Wang Dongling, Yang Qian, Huang Yali, Ruan Jie, Hou Wenyi, Li Mo, Gen Jingqi, Xu Bing, Zhang Qiang, Shengtian Zheng, and Dang Qingnian.

• A delegation from China’s Ministry of Culture, en route to South America, came to the Center in May 1991 to discuss the arts and culture of America and possible cultural exchanges for the future. Representatives included Gao Zhangxiang, Wang Dajun, Zhang Zhiya, Luo Yang, and Cao Weiyan.

• In September 1991, Li Dan-na, Head of the National Intermediate and Elementary Music Education Committee of the Chinese Musicians’ Association, and Li Ling, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Musicians’ Association, came to the United States on a five-city tour to study American music education and the teaching of Orff Schulwerk music pedagogy in the United States. While in New York, they met with educators from area public and private primary and secondary schools. The Center coordinated their program.

• The first concert of Pacific music coordinated by the Pacific Composers Project was “Premieres! New Works from Mainland China.” ” Premieres!” featured works by five young composers and was performed at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre on October 17, 1991. The New Music Consort, an innovative contemporary ensemble from New York, performed the program of world and United States premieres. The Center worked closely with The New Music Consort directors Claire Heldrich and Madeleine Shapiro to select composers, commission works, correspond with artists in China, raise funds, and publicize the concert. (See “Pacific Composers Project,” p. 30, for details on this concert.)

• At a reception hosted by the Chinese Information and Culture Center of Taiwan in New York on April 1, 1992, Chou met Kuo Wei-fan, Chairman of the Council for Cultural Planning and Development in Taiwan. Chou’s discussion with Kuo and the staff at the Culture Center focused on the development of Chinese arts and set the foundation for possible future collaboration between the Center and the Culture Center.

• A second Pacific Composers Project concert was held on May 13, 1992, at De IJsbreker Music Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The program, called “Pacific Music Festival,” was based on concerts organized by the Center for the Pacific Composers Conference in Sapporo, Japan, in the summer of 1990.

• Maestro Hu Yong-Yan, concurrently associate conductor of the Savannah Symphony Orchestra and adviser and permanent conductor of the Central Philharmonic in Beijing, met with Chou to discuss his professional responsibilities and to exchange ideas in May 1992. As guest conductor of the Shanghai Symphony, Hu was scheduled to lead the orchestra on a month-long European tour in the fall of 1992; the Symphony’s program included Chou’s composition And The Fallen Petals.

• In June 1992 Professor Chou met with Du Yaxiong, an ethnomusicologist and leader in non-Han Chinese folk music research, based at the Chinese Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Their discussion concentrated on the changing role of minority populations in China and abroad.

• Chi Fu Den, Dean of Academic Affairs at Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, met with Chou at  the Center in June 1992. Den consulted with Chou on the development of a new humanities curriculum for his university.

• Beginning in November 1992, Chou served as member of the selection committee for the “Twentieth-Century Masterpieces by Chinese Musicians.” This project, established by the Chinese Culture Promotion Society in Beijing, was organized to choose 124 outstanding compositions by 20th-century composers of Chinese origin. Selections were performed in Beijing in June 1993 in a series of ten concerts; Chou’s And The Fallen Petals was included in the program.

• In March 1993, Chou met with two representatives of the Tianjin Conservatory of Music—Shi Weizheng, president, and Bao Yuankai, composer and professor—to discuss music and art education in America and the role of international exchanges as a part of American music  education.

• Chou served as Honorary Advisor to the Chinese Music Festival 1993, held in Hong Kong from October 15 to November 5. The event featured Chinese music talents from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, as well as artists of Chinese background living elsewhere. Chou advised on the selection of performance groups and concert programming.

• On April 16 and 17, 1994, the State University of New York at Buffalo presented the Festival of Music by Contemporary Chinese Composers, consisting of concerts and panel discussions. The Festival, which was organized by Kenneth Kwan, in close collaboration with the Center, reflected the philosophy of the Pacific Composers Project, introducing music by contemporary Chinese composers that explores their Chinese heritage. (See “Pacific Composers Project, p. 30, for details.)

The Center Works With the Sichuan Conservatory

The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, an ongoing supporter of the Center’s work, contributed funding to enable music specialists from the Philippines to travel to China to participate in the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project. In addition to their time in Yunnan, both Jose Maceda and Ramon Santos spent time in Chengdu, at the Sichuan Conservatory, offering lectures and interacting with the music faculty and students.

In January 1994, Jose Maceda, Professor Emeritus, University of the Philippines, addressed the Sichuan Conservatory’s Faculty of Traditional Music on recent trends in ethnomusicology, including “public ethnomusicology” in the United States, and on training in the humanities and philosophy.

In speaking with a small audience of composers and students, Maceda encouraged them to look to their own Asian “orchestral” tradition. This is in keeping with the work Professor Maceda had engaged in at the Pacific Composers Conference (see Newsletter, Volume 9, Fall 1990), a meeting held in Hokkaido, Japan, that focused on the need for younger Pacific composers to search out their own indigenous musical traditions rather than wholly adopt Western approaches to music.

Ramon Santos, Professor, College of Music, University of the Philippines, made a professional visit to the Sichuan Conservatory in the beginning of June 1995. While in Chengdu, Santos gave two lectures: “Philippine Modern Music” for the Composition and Theory Faculty and “Philippine Oral Traditions” for the Musicology Faculty. He also had a one day field trip to the Dujiang Waterworks and a nearby Taoist Mountain Temple (Qingcheng Shan). The Waterworks, a more than 2,000-year-old dike, and the temple represent a link between a major public works project and the community spirit it inspired. At the temple Santos observed Taoist rituals that included music and dance. 

Sending these two music specialists to Chengdu builds on a long-term relationship the Center has had with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music that dates back to the early years of the Center’s work. In 1987, when Chou Wen-chung undertook a fact-finding trip to assess the intellectual climate in China at that time, he found that Chengdu was a city where the arts were particularly healthy. Although negatively influenced by the post-Tiananmen atmosphere, the Conservatory is still a place with faculty and students eager for contact with experts from abroad.

Planned Exchange Trips Unfortunately Canceled

Over the course of the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project, there were several specialists with whom the Center worked who tried, in vain, to carry out trips to or from China. In the early stages of the project, we had hoped to exchange architects—especially those who specialized in museum architecture—so that the design for the new Nationalities Museum could be influenced by the most up-to-date thinking in the field. E. Verner Johnson and Joanne Horgan, principals in the Boston firm E. Verner Johnson and Associates, were among the first museum architects we  consulted. We believed these talented architects — who were responsible for the design of the Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, and the Hong Kong History Museum, Kowloon, Hong Kong—had much to offer the Chinese. Although they did meet with the Cultural Leaders’ Inaugural Study Group on its April 1993 visit to the United States, they were unable to schedule a trip to China. 

Ralph Appelbaum, recently known for his design of the United States Holocaust History Museum in Washington, D.C., and the renovation of the fourth floor Fossil Halls and “Dark Caves, Bright Visions: Life in Ice Age Europe” at the American Museum of Natural History, was also on the brink of traveling to China for the Yunnan Project. His excruciatingly demanding schedule prevented him from carrying out this plan. In the same way, Charles Correa, noted Indian architect, designer of the renowned Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Museum in Ahmedabad and recipient of the 1994 Praemium Imperiale, for lifetime achievement in the arts, was also unable to carry out his intention of visiting China in connection with the Yunnan Project.

Gao Zongyu, director of the Yunnan Nationalities Museum, was twice scheduled to travel to India to visit the Crafts Museum in New Delhi. The museum is world famous as a laboratory and center for both the creation and display of traditional Indian arts. Its director, Jyotindra Jain, consulted with the Chinese in Yunnan. The November 1995 deadline for the Nationalities Museum’s opening prevented Gao—or his Deputy Director, Xie Mohua—from making the India trip.

Three Chinese architects representing the Yunnan Design Institute, Rao Weichun, Yin Zuoyao, and Mao Kun, had hoped to come to the United States to visit several cities, observe architectural styles, and meet with their counterparts. Unfortunately, many obstacles delayed their trip, and then it became too late for them to influence the design of the new Nationalities Museum.

In May 1995, the Center held a Review Session to evaluate the progress of the Yunnan Project to date. There were four specialists we very much wanted to include who were unable to participate. Two of them, Douglas Schwartz and Duane Anderson, are President and Vice President, respectively, of the School of American Research—a prestigious repository for Native American art and a center where research scholars explore Native American heritage as well as anthropology, archeology, and American culture and history. SAR provided indepth briefings for both the Cultural Leaders who came from Yunnan in April 1993 and the Curriculum Group that came in November 1994.

Two other specialists were scheduled to attend the May 1995 Review Session from Indonesia—I Made Bandem, Director, Indonesian College of the Arts, and Edi Sedyawati, Directorate General for Culture, Department for Education and Culture, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Indonesia, whose position is at a ministerial level. Both Bandem and Sedyawati were forced to cancel their participation at the last minute because they were required to attend urgent cultural meetings in Indonesia. Although Bandem had traveled earlier to Yunnan to advise on the dance portion of the Nationalities Institute’s new arts curriculum, this was to have been the first trip for Sedyawati.

The Center Receives Funding for a Variety of New Projects

Over the course of the past several years, the Center has received funding for projects across a wide spectrum of disciplines. In the spring of 1995, The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., contributed a $100,000 grant to the Center to initiate an urban and architectural study, comparing cities in the United States and China. American and Chinese specialists in architecture, urban studies, sociology, the environment, cultural history, and preservation will travel to each other’s countries to observe, collect data, and meet with their counterparts to compare urban organization in the two countries.

Northern Telecom, a Canadian communications company, gave the Center a grant of $50,000 to kick off a major fund-raising campaign to support symphonic music in China. Through a series of guest visits by Western conductors and principals, educational workshops, chamber concerts, and by adding Western arts management techniques, the Center hopes to assist China in its efforts to raise the level of its orchestral music.

Daniel and Rebecca Ng, of Hong Kong, have contributed $16,000 to the Center—$15,000 of which is for the purpose of creating a database of musicians of Chinese heritage residing in the United States. This information will be used to bolster the above-mentioned project in symphonic music and also will further the Center’s previous work in the Pacific Composers Project (PCP).

An offshoot of the 1990 Pacific Music Festival’s Pacific Composers Conference (PCC), the PCP was designed to provide opportunities for performance of music by composers who are inspired and influenced by their Pacific heritage; to provide Western performance groups access to scores and information on Pacific composers; and to offer the public the opportunity to become better acquainted with Pacific music. (See p. 30 for more on the “Pacific Composers Project.”) The new database will augment work already done by the Center to promote the linkage between Chinese composers and musicians, on the one hand, and Western performance groups and audiences, on the other.

Pacific Composers Project (PCP)

History of the PCP

In June 1990, after two years of planning—including a midway change of venue from China to Japan because of events at Tiananmen—the Center served as one of the major organizers of the Pacific Music Festival (PMF) in Sapporo, Japan {see. Newsletter, Volume 10, Spring 1992). The Center recruited a youth orchestra from the Pacific region and designed and carried out the Pacific Composers Conference (PCC). The PCC brought together forty-six composers, all of whom were at different points in their careers, to explore the influence of their Pacific heritages on their compositions and the future of Asian/Pacific music.

As an offshoot of the PCC, in 1991 the Center founded the Pacific Composers Project (PCP), to help promote the musical works of young and emerging Pacific composers by providing exposure through concerts and recordings of their music, increasing access to Pacific scores for Western performance groups interested in adding Pacific music to their repertoire, and offering resources and information on Pacific composers and their compositions to an interested public. 

In setting up the PCP, a Selection Committee was formed, comprised of composers Chou Wen-chung, Earl Kim, Chinary Ung, and Joji Yuasa; and an Editorial Committee was formed, with younger composers Tetsuo Amemiya, Chen Yi, Chew Seok-kwee, Qu Xiaosong, and David Tsang as members.

PCP Resources and Related Activities

The PCP Library was set up at the offices of the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange on the Columbia University campus in New York City. This resource center has been frequented by music students and professionals interested in exploring new works for concerts, student recitals, dissertation performances, and academic papers. Several events that resulted are described below.

While planning the performance of Chou’s Landscapes in October 1992, Paul Dunkel, Resident Conductor, American Composers Orchestra, and Music Director/Conductor of both the Denver Chamber Orchestra and the New Orchestra of Westchester, solicited the help of Chou and the PCP as he explored the possibility of organizing a mini festival of Chinese music.

Claire Heldrich and Madeleine Shapiro, whose New Music Consort is in residence at the Manhattan School of Music, have a long-standing relationship with the PCP. Through the PCP Library they have become acquainted with composers Chen Yi, Bun-Ching Lam, Ge Ganru, Guo Wenjing, He Xuntian, Qu Xiaosong, and Zhou Long. In 1993 the group commissioned works from Zhou Long and Ge Ganru.

In March 1993, the Manhattan Contemporary Ensemble performed Chen Yi’s As in a Dream. Manhattan School of Music student Pi-Ling Lu chose music from the PCP Library for a voice recital in June 1993 as did Glen Saunders for his dissertation performance.

The San Francisco Symphony’s Wet Ink Festival, with Bright Sheng as Artistic Director, took place from April 9 to 30, 1993. This three-week celebration focused on the music of composers from the Pacific Rim and featured works by seven composers associated with the PCP: Chen Yi, Chou Wen-chung, Conrado Del Rosario, Alexina Louie, Peter Sculthorpe, Bright Sheng, and Isang Yun.

William Kraft, composer and conductor, consulted Chou in April 1993 on the possibility of collaborating with the PCP to organize a Pacific Region Festival at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Through the Center’s recommendation, PCP composers Chinary Ung, Joji Yuasa, and Earl Kim agreed to participate in the Festival, which took place in the spring of 1994. The PCP continues to provide resource opportunities for Western performance groups interested in developing a repertoire of music by composers inspired and influenced by their Pacific heritage, exposure for Pacific composers, and information for scholars interested in increasing their knowledge of Pacific music.

PCP Concerts

The first concert of Pacific music coordinated by the PCP was “Premieres! New Works from Mainland China.” “Premieres!” featured works by five young composers and was performed at Columbia University’s Kathryn Bache Miller Theatre on October 17, 1991. The New Music Consort, an innovative contemporary ensemble from New York, referred to above, performed the program of world and United States premieres. The Center worked closely with The New Music Consort directors Claire Heldrich and Madeleine Shapiro to select composers, commission works, correspond with artists in China, raise funds, and publicize the concert. (The concert program appears on the facing page.)

The second PCP concert was held on May 13, 1992, at Music Center De IJsbreker in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The program was based on concerts organized by our Center for the Pacific Composers Conference—a part of the Pacific Music Festival that took place in June 1990 in Sapporo, Japan. The Amsterdam concert came about as a result of conversations between Chou Wen-chung and Jan Wolff, Artistic Director, Music Center De IJsbreker. Wolff had traveled to Japan to observe the Pacific Music Festival. Out of a belief in the importance of promoting new Asian music, Wolff adapted the three concerts of contemporary Pacific music held in Sapporo to a one-concert format, even borrowing for the concert the title “Pacific Music Festival.” The concert program appears on page 32.

The PCP was again the inspiration for two concerts held in Buffalo, New York, on April 16 and 17, 1994. These concerts, comprised entirely of contemporary Chinese compositions, were part of a two day “Festival of Music” that included panel discussions as well. This was the first such conference to be held in the United States. Kenneth Kwan, a Ph.D. candidate in music theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo, used PCP resources over the course of a year to plan the festival.

In collaboration with Chou Wen-chung and the PCP, panel discussions were organized that included Chou Wen-chung, David Felder, Eric Lai, Richard Tsang, Jeffrey Stadelman, and Zhou Long, addressing such issues as “Contemporary Chinese Music,” “The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and its Unique Repertoires of Contemporary Works by Hong Kong Composers,” and “Using Traditional Chinese Instruments in Combination with Western Instruments.”

The two concerts, which were held at the Slee Concert Hall on the SUNY Buffalo campus, included works by Chan Ka-Nin, Chan Wing-Wah, Chen Mao-Shuen, Chou Wen-chung, Alice Ho, Alexina Louie, Hwang-Long Pan, Qu Xiaosong, Bright Sheng, Richard Tsang, and Zhou Long. The concert programs appear on page 33.”

The May 13, 1992, Music Center De IJsbreker concert was based on concerts held at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, in summer 1990.

Chou Wen-chung’s Many and Varied Activities

In addition to his responsibilities as Founder and Director of the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange, Chou Wen-chung is involved in a wide variety of professional activities in education and the arts. These commitments are often intertwined with the Center’s Core Programs, as illustrated by the following: 

• From October 6 through 10 of 1990, Chou was honored as one of five participants in the “Minds for History” conference of the Cosanti Foundation, held in Arcosanti, Arizona. Along with Betty Friedan, James Farmer, John Allen, and Lynn Margulis, Chou took part in a week of events “designed to identify and document the processes and models of thinking employed by extraordinary individuals… whose minds have generated remarkable discoveries, initiatives, achievements, and insights into culture, history, and society.” Chou’s composition Windswept Peaks was performed during the conference.
• While in Arizona, Chou visited ancient Indian sites and the Heard Museum, making contacts and collecting information for the Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Project.
• In October and November 1990, Chou met with the publisher of Ricordi—the Italian publishing firm. In addition to discussing the unfinished works of Edgard Varèse, Chou explored Ricordi’s possible interest in Center projects (the Pacific Composer’s Project in particular). These discussions were fruitful, and might lead to future publication of works written by composers involved in the PCP.
• In December 1990, Chou made a return trip to Amsterdam to teach and serve as a leader at the International Composers Workshop at which contemporary and traditional music were both  discussed. Great interest was expressed in the Pacific Composers Conference, the Pacific Composers Project, and the Center’s Pacific music resources by colleagues and new acquaintances at the Amsterdam workshop. Echoes from the Gorge and Windswept Peaks were performed during the period of the December meetings.
• In 1992, Chou began serving on the American Nominating Committee for the Praemium Imperiale, “a series of international prizes awarded to a living individual for lifetime achievement in the disciplines of Architecture, Film/Video, Music, Painting, Sculpture, and Theatre.” The Praemium Imperiale was established by the Japan Art Association, and the Nominating Committee is chaired by David Rockefeller, Jr.
• Chou’s involvement with the archival material of Edgard Varèse has brought to the Center’s attention the following individuals and institutions: Mark Kidel , an independent television producer and director, who is preparing a documentary film on the life and work of Varèse in conjunction with the British Broadcasting Company; Marc Battier, IRCAM-Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, who has expressed interest in the Center’s Pacific Composers Project and has helped expand our network to include Pacific composers living in Paris; and Nancy Perloff, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, who has expressed interest in the Center’s work with the arts of Yunnan’s minority nationalities.
• Chou’s composition Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra was premiered at Carnegie Hall on January 10, 1993. The piece was performed hy the American Composers Orchestra with Janos Starker as soloist and Dennis Russell Davies conducting.
• On April 1, 1993, a retrospective concert of Chou’s music was held at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Five works, written from 1965 to 1990, were performed by Boston Musica Viva, the New Music Consort, and Speculum Musicae. The event was organized by a committee with Isaac Stern as Honorary Chairman and Norma F. Flenders as Chairperson; additional assistance came from the Greenwich House Music School. The concert was also a celebration of Chou’s 70th birthday.
• In August 1993, Chou received a commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition for a string quartet. 
• On March 3, 1994, Marian van Dijk of the Centre for Microtonal Music in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, began a three-week stay in New York to consult Chou on the works of Edgard Varèse.
• In April 1994, Chou was appointed to the Board of Advisors for Film America. Chou will be consulting on a series of documentary films, Music in the 20th Century.
• In May 1994, the 16th Conference and Festival of the Asian Composers’ League was presented by the ACL’s National Committee in Taiwan. Participants assembled from around the world for seven days of panel discussions and concerts. Chou presented the Chinese version of the paper “Asian Music Today? What is it?” to enthusiastic acclaim.
• In June 1994, Chou—a member of the American Nominating Committee— participated in a series of events held to honor recipients of the Praemium Imperiale (see above). Events included a dinner at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Family estate in Pocantico Hills, New York (now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation); a press conference held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and a reception at the White House. 
• Chou served on the nominating jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for 1995.
• In August 1994, Chou traveled to the Civitella Ranieri Center near Umbertide, Italy, to consult on the formation of a residency program for artists and thinkers from around the world.
• Since early 1993 Chou has consulted on the production of a documentary on the life and work of Edgard Varèse, sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation and Les Films d’Ici of France. In October 1994, Chou opened his home (formerly the home of Edgard Varèse) for filming and provided an on camera interview.
• Chou, who is on Film America’s Board of Advisors, was interviewed on film for their documentary series Music in the 20th Century.
• In June 1995, Chou made final arrangements to donate instruments that belonged to Edgard Varèse to the Musee de la Musique in Paris, France.
• Between 1991 and the end of 1995 the following compositions by Chou Wen-chung were published by C. F. Peters Corporation: Beijing in the Mist, Yün, Echoes from the Gorge, and Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra.

Advisory Council Changes

The Center extends a warm welcome to George Rupp, President, Columbia University, who assumed the position as Honorary Chairman of the Advisory Council’s Board of Managers. President Rupp is replacing Michael I. Sovern, Kent Professor of Law, School of Law, Columbia University, who stepped down from the Board of Managers when he resigned from Columbia’s presidency in the summer of 1993. We are pleased and gratified to report that since returning to teaching, former President Sovern has agreed to become a member of the Center’s Advisory Council. Also joining the Advisory Council since 1992 are Gerald Adelmann, President, Canal Corridor Association, Chicago; New Yorkers Norma F. Flender, pianist, Terrill E. Lautz, Vice President and Secretary, The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., and Helen Walker Spencer, Fund Raiser, Project Originations, Inc.; and Tokyo resident, Carl Wolz, Professor of Dance, Japan Women’s College of Physical Education.

The Center would like to express our best wishes and sincere appreciation to Robert E. Armstrong, Joan Harris, and Esther B. Hewlett for their generous contributions and dedicated  service during their terms on the Advisory Council. Peter Smith also stepped down from the Board of Managers upon resigning from his position as Dean of Columbia’s School of the Arts.

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of two Advisory Council members whose  dedication and contribution to the Center were immeasurable:

We remember Porter McKeever with great fondness and abundant gratitude. McKeever, one of the founding members of the Advisory Council, serving the Center from 1980 to 1992, offered continuous support, spirit, and knowledge to every facet of the Center. His contributions strengthened the bond between the United States and China. The ties he established will continue serving and influencing generations to come. Porter McKeever, a Columbia graduate, passed away March 3, 1992.

Harrison E. Salisbury, an insightful author and journalist, loyal friend to the Center, and member of the Advisory Council from 1984 to 1993, will be remembered for many outstanding qualities and innumerable accomplishments. A Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent for the New York Times and author of twenty-nine books, Salisbury, dedicated much of his time to enriching the coverage of China and the arts. Salisbury passed away on July 5, 1993. We are extremely grateful for his many years of support.

Staff Changes

In May 1992, Carrie Lanese, who received her B.A. in International Affairs from the Elliot School at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., joined the Center as the Program Assistant after spending a year in China teaching English at Northern Communications University in Beijing and studying Chinese language and culture at Normal University in Shanghai. In the spring of 1994, she was promoted to the position of Program Associate. 

William Cossolias, who holds a B.A. in Religion from New York University, has received two promotions since being hired in 1991 — first in 1993 to Administrative Assistant and then in 1994 to Administrative Associate, replacing Elizabeth Mintz Friedberg, who left that position to pursue graduate studies in social work after four-and-a-half years at the Center.

Molly Kinney, who preceded Carrie Lanese as Program Assistant, resigned from her position in the spring of 1992 to continue her graduate work in International Affairs. Before leaving the Center altogether, Molly stayed on until the fall of 1992 to work part time on the Pacific Composers Project.

Since the spring of 1991, student interns, part-time assistants, interpreters, and translators have included Patricia Chang, Peter Chang, Chen Xiaoling, Chen Yi, Claire Cohn, Feng Wei, Magnus Fiskesjo, Elizabeth Mintz Friedberg, Cathy Hong, Sara Huong, Michele Jhun, Kang Xiaofei, Connie Lee, Liu Keming, Liu Sujuan, Ziad R. Mawlawi, Caroline Nath, Grace Norman, Pan Shyh-ji, John Schwartz, Shuang Shen, Dimitri Starostin, Jane Stewart, Betty Ting, David Tsang, Xu Haoliang, Emily Yang, Erhmei Yuan, Yu Jian, Farnoosh Zamani, Zhang Hong, Zhou Long, and Zhu Ciliu. Mitchell Mensch is the Center’s financial consultant.

Acknowledgments

The Center is grateful to the following organizations and individuals for general support, program grants, and contributions received from spring 1991 through summer 1995:

• Asian Cultural Council
• Chou Wen-chung
• The Ford Foundation
• The Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation
• The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.
• Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Ng
• Helen Walker Spencer
• Northern Telecom
• United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia

The following individuals made a generous contribution to the Center through their participation in the May 1995 Yunnan Nationalities Cultures Review Session:

• Gerald Adelmann
• Carolyn d’Amboise
• Chiang Ching
• Yi-an Chou
• Sana Musasama
• Marcia K. Nielsen
• Waldemar A. Nielsen
• Helen Walker Spencer
• Audrey Topping

The Center thanks the following organizations and individuals for contributions of materials, services, and hospitality that enriched its 1991-1995 programs:

• Dawn Allan
• American Association of Museums
• American Folklife Center
• American Museum of Natural History
• Paul Anderer
• Carole Anderson
• Art Institute of Chicago
• The Asia Society
• Bai Demao
• Baltimore School for the Arts
• Petra Barreras
• Beverly Becker
• Thomas Bender
• Barry Bergey
• Ernest L. Boyer
• Tom Bradley
• Jeanne Brody
• Brooklyn Museum
• Margaret Burroughs
• Burston-Marsteller
• George Calderaro
• Canal Corridor Association
• Cannon County Arts Center
• Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution
• Center for Southern Folklore
• Joseph and Barbara Cerno
• Gregorita Chavarria
• Chen Senlong
• Vivien Ta-Ying Chen
• Chen Yanhua
• Chicago Historical Society
• Martha Coigney
• Columbia University
• Geoffrey W. Conrad
• Debbie Cooke
• Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Patricia Cruz
• Bernard Crystal
• Dao Meilan
• Tom Dodson
• The DuSable Museum of African-American History, Inc.
• Kate Eisenhart
• Gloria Emerson
• Douglas Evelyn
• Diana Fane
• Feng Wei
• Field Museum of Natural History
• Dru Finley
• Nora Fisher
• The Ford Foundation
• Adelheid M. Gealt
• Peter Geithner
• Mattiebelle Gittinger
• Henry Glassie
• Kim Gordon
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Guo Wenjing
• Peter Harris
• John Haworth
• He Xuntian
• Candace Lee Heald
• Sidney Ho
• Joanne Horgan
• Howard University, College of Fine Arts
• Huang Hong
• Kim Igoe
• Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
• Institute of American Indian Arts
• Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
• Alan Jabbour
• Nancy Jervis
• E . Verner Johnson & Associates
• Michael Joroff
• The Juilliard School
• Rebecca Kamen, Governor of New Mexico
• Bert Krawcyk
• Fran La Fleur
• Fred Lazarus
• Jonna Lazarus
• Tunney Lee
• Susana Leval
• Li Delun
• Li Junjie
• Li Yongyuan
• Li Zhongyong
• Liang Jinquan
• Liu Dadong
• Lockport Gallery
• Lu Weiming
• S. T. Lung
• Maryland Institute, College of Art
• Mather Museum, Indiana University
• Maxwell Museum of Anthropology
• Ruth Mayleas
• Memphis, Tennessee, Mayor’s Office
• Meng Guang
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Mexican Cultural Institute
• Tom Miller
• Minneapolis Institute of Art
• Minneapolis Public Schools
• Minnesota Center for Arts Education
• Minnesota College of Art and Design
• Barbara Morehouse
• Michael Morris
• Mu Yunguang
• Museum for African Art
• Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
• Museum of International Folk Art
• Museum of Modern Art
• Mystic Seaport, Inc.
• Elizabeth Naranjo
• Gloria Naranjo
• Rose Naranjo
• Tessie Naranjo
• Ernest Nast
• National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
• National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution
• The New Museum of Contemporary Art
• New York University, Museum Studies Program
• Waldemar A. Nielsen
• Joseph Noble
• Office of Folklife Programs, Library of Congress
• Old Sturbridge Village
• Drew Oliver
• Palace of the Governors, Sante Fe
• Diana Parker
• Parsons School of Design
• Peabody Conservatory of Music
• Russell A. Phillips, Jr.
• James Polshek
• Pojoaque Pueblo Poeh Center and Museum
• Martin Prekop
• Joseph Roach
• Marian Rodee
• Abraham Rosman
• Norman Ross
• Nan Rothschild
• Anya Peterson Royce
• Paula Rubel
• San Francisco Art Institute
• Jillian Steiner Sandrock
• Santa Clara Pueblo
• Santa Clara Pueblo Cultural Preservation Project
• Leon Schmidt
• School of American Ballet
• School of American Research
• The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Peter Seitel
• Shelby County, Tennessee, Mayor’s Office
• Paul Smith
• Smithsonian Folklife Festival
• Smithsonian Institution
• Song Daneng
• Studio Museum in Harlem
• Rina Swentzell
• Lonn Taylor
• Tennessee Arts Commission
• Jennifer Tesoro
• Textile Museum
• Larry Thomas
• Kathryn Tijerina
• Betty Ting
• Jane Tom
• Sanford Tom
• Reiko Tomii
• Irvin and Lisa Trujillo
• Marsha Tucker
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Minnesota
• University of New Mexico
• Marta Vega
• Marsha Wagner
• Walker Art Center
• Wang Anguo
• David Wang
• Wang Jinyuan
• Eileen Wells
• Tom Wells
• Wesleyan University
• David Whisnant
• Danielle Wierengo
• Deborah Winograd
• Constance Wolf
• Mary Louise Wood
• Wu Liangyong
• Ya Wen
• Yao Zhonghua
• Yin Jun
• Yu Hui
• Zhang Bingchen
• Zhang Qicheng
• Zhang Zhongqi
• Zhao Hongtao
• Zhao Tingguang
• Zheng Shengtian
• Zou Deci

A special thank-you to the following individuals for their time and dedication to the Center from 1991 to 1995:

• Gerald Adelmann
• Stephen Becker
• Willard Boyd
• Dai Guanglu
• Vishakha Desai
• Marvin Harris
• Peter Harris
• Flora Kaplan
• Frank Kehl
• Laurel Kendall
• Leslie King-Hammond
• Liu Deyou
• Leslie Lo
• Ma Lisan
• Robert McNulty
• Dianne Pilgrim
• Anthony J. Saich
• Ralph Samuelson
• Larry Thomas
• Tian Feng
• Michelle Vosper
• Wang Zhengfang
• Gwendolyn Wright
• Wu Jinghua
• Wu Zuqiang
• Zhang Wutang
• Su Zheng
• Zhou Wenzheng
• Zhou Ying

• * The people and organizations to which the Center is indebted are too numerous to list completely. We apologize for any omissions and thank all those involved for their generosity of time, spirit, materials, and support.

Purpose and Organization

The Center for United States-China Arts Exchange is a not-for-profit national organization affiliated with Columbia University. The Center was founded to promote mutual interest and understanding in the arts of the United States and China and to promote creativity in both countries. The Center’s geographic reach has since expanded to include the entire Pacific region.

Established on October 1, 1978, with support grants from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a research grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Center receives contributions of office space and university services from Columbia, where it is headquartered. The Center is not a funding organization; it relies on contributions of money, materials, and services from foundations, corporations, and individuals to carry out its programs.

The Board of Managers and the Advisory Council, both created in the spring of 1981, oversee the Center’s programs and policies.

Board of Managers

• George Rupp, Honorary Chairman
• Jonathan R. Cole 
• Chou Wen-chung 

Advisory Council* 

• Gerald W. Adelmann 
• Norma F. Flender 
• Geraldine S. Kunstadter 
• David M. Lampton 
• Terrill E. Lautz 
• Ming Cho Lee 
• Robert A. Levinson 
• Cho-Liang Lin 
• Yo-Yo Ma 
• Arthur Miller
• Douglas P. Murray
• Waldemar A. Nielsen
• Russell A. Phillips, Jr. 
• Joseph W. Polisi 
• Arthur H. Rosen 
• Norman Ross 
• Michael I. Sovern
• Helen Walker Spencer
• Audrey Topping
• Carl Wolz
• *as of Fall 1995

Officers and Staff

• Chou Wen-chung, Director
• Susan L. Rhodes, Associate Director
• William Cossolias, Administrative Associate
• Ken Hao, Assistant to the Director
• Carrie L. Lanese, Program Associate

Student Intern

• Grace Norman

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Newsletter/Special Issue

• Editor: Susan L . Rhodes
• Assistant Editors: Carrie L. Lanese and Scott Monje
• Design/Layout: Melanie Teagle, Office of University Publications, Columbia University

• The Center for US-China Arts Exchange
• Columbia University

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