Center for US-China Arts Exchange

Center for US-China Arts Exchange
Founded	October 1, 1978; 46 years ago
Founder	Chou Wen-chung
Dissolved	2019
Purpose	Cultural exchange
Location	Columbia University; New York City, New York, U.S.;
Area served	United States, China, Asia
Method	Grants, funding, fellowships
Owner	Columbia University
Website	uschinaarts.org

The Center for US-China Arts Exchange was a private, not-for-profit, national organization which carried out programs of exchange in the arts between scholars, practitioners and organizations in the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

Established at Columbia University in 1978 by composer and Professor Chou Wen-chung, the Center was launched with initial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. Later donors included, among many others, the Starr Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia and the MacArthur Foundation. The Chinese Ministry of Culture was the Center’s counterpart in China and which funded the domestic expenses of many of the programs carried out there. The first organization to sponsor exchanges between the two countries solely in the arts, the Center organized hundreds of projects and succeeded in creating a network of ongoing cultural relationships between two countries which had been estranged for thirty years.

Immediately upon its establishment, the Center won enthusiastic support from leading figures in the cultural sphere as well as in academia and the business world. Members of the Advisory Council included conductor Leonard Bernstein, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, playwright Arthur Miller, architect I.M. Pei, violinist Lin Cho-Liang, author Henry Wouk and Nobel Prize winning physicist Yang Chen-ning.

America’s most renowned figures in the arts were among the many eager to visit China. Violinist Isaac Stern was the first, making a performance tour in 1979 with pianist David Golub. The Center made arrangements for the film crew whose documentary “From Mao to Mozart” won an Academy Award. Other prominent figures were Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Ming Cho Lee and Alwin Nikolais and many others in all the fields of the visual and performing arts. In 1990 the Center expanded its scope beyond urban centers to include programs of cultural and environmental conservation in rural Yunnan province. Thousands of participants as diverse as architects, shamanists and amphibian experts took part in projects to support the endangered lifestyle and landscape of Yunnan’s ethnic minority groups.

In 2018 the Center completed its role as program facilitator and fundraising partner, bringing to a conclusion forty years of innovative exchange work. The Center’s extensive archives have been acquired by Columbia University’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library and are available to researchers by appointment.

History

The Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange was established at Columbia University in 1978 as a cultural response to the political rapprochement of the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China following a hiatus of thirty years. Founder Chou Wen-chung saw China’s re-opening as an unprecedented event that would bring about a major resurgence of the arts in China. The stated mission of the Center was to stimulate public interest in the arts of both countries in order to foster mutual respect based on recognition of cultural achievements. The strategy was to initiate systematic exchanges between organizations and individuals which would spark a ripple effect in many directions. Chou believed that bringing together leading creative minds from contrasting cultures would result in an artistic explosion that would benefit both countries and contribute to the advancement of the world.

Shortly after President Nixon made his historic trip to Beijing in 1972, Chou visited China for the first time since his departure twenty-six years earlier. China was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution and communication was severely restricted, but he managed to meet with old classmates from the Shanghai Conservatory and plant the seeds In 1977 he visited again to give a lecture at the Central Conservatory in Beijing to an audience of high-level cultural leaders and government officials. After his presentation, he proposed the establishment of an arts exchange program between the two countries officials put him in touch with Wang Bingnan, director of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a “people-to-people” agency. On October 1st of the following year, Chou signed an agreement with Wang Bingnan and the Center was officially launched.

Three months later, on January 1st, 1979, the United States and the People’s Republic of China normalized diplomatic relations in an agreement signed by President Jimmy Carter. The Center then began to work directly with the Chinese Ministry of Culture to carry out a wide range of exchange programs focused mainly on professionals working in urban centers in all field of the performing, literary and visual arts. In 1990, the Center further expanded its scope to include programs of cultural and environmental conservation in support of ethnic minority groups in rural Yunnan province.

The Center for US-China Arts Exchange completed its program operations in 2018. Its archives, documenting an intriguing segment of modern cultural history, were acquired by the C.V.Starr Library at Columbia University.

Leadership

Chou Wen-chung, distinguished composer whose sensitive melding of east and west led to the emergence of contemporary Chinese music, has had a momentous impact on the development of modern music in Asia and in post-colonial cultures. As an influential music educator based at Columbia University, he nurtured young composers from around the world and trained the first generation of contemporary composers from mainland China. Chou devoted the last forty years of his life to an unexpected career as cultural ambassador. In 1978, he established the Center for US-China Arts Exchange at Columbia University which organized people-to-people exchanges between arts professionals of the two countries.

Born in Yantai, China in 1923, Chou Wen-chung came to the United States in 1946 and studied composition at the New England Conservatory in Boston with Nicholas Slonimsky. He moved to New York in 1949 and began private lessons with French-born composer Edgar Varèse, a wildly eccentric genius and demanding teacher who became his artistic mentor. The same year Chou completed his first composition, “Landscapes,” which is known today as the first composition in music history that is independent of either Western or Eastern music grammar. Written for western instruments, but inspired by Chinese poetry, “Landscapes” was premiered in 1953 by the San Francisco Symphony orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski, launching the young immigrant onto a promising career, which steadily gained momentum for two decades.

While working as Varèse’s copyist in the 1950’s, Chou received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to conduct research on the history of the ancient Chinese zither, or qin which, together with Chinese calligraphy, was to influence profoundly the essence of his musical style. In 1954 he completed a master’s degree in music at Columbia University where he studied under composer Otto Luening and musicologist Paul Henry Lang. He also composed a large number of works throughout the decade including a commission by the Louisville Orchestra. Premiered in 1955, “And the Fallen Petals” has become his most performed work today, played by leading symphony orchestras around the world.

Chou Wen-chung’s creative contribution was recognized in the United States early in his career. He received a music award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1963 and was elected a full member in 1982. His personal life also flourished in the 1960’s. He married concert pianist Chang Yi-an who later became a leading artist and teacher in the field of floral design. They had two sons, Luyen and Sumin. Chou began teaching at Columbia University in 1964 and during his tenure of almost thirty years, he served in numerous leadership positions such as Chair of the Music Division and Vice-Dean of the School of the Arts. He expanded the cultural horizon in music education by presenting the University’s first graduate courses in Chinese Music and Asian Humanities and launched the doctoral program in composition, nurturing composers from around the world in a multi-cultural vortex of creative expression. By encouraging gifted composers from China to enroll, he spawned the first generation of contemporary composers from the mainland, including today’s celebrities Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi and Zhou Long.

Chou revealed his skill as a cultural diplomat in 1978 when he established the Center for US-China Arts Exchange at Columbia University, collaborating with prestigious institutions and professionals in both countries on a wide range of high-caliber projects. The Center’s program thrived for forty years, and its archives have been acquired by the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University.

Chou Wen-chung’s music manuscripts have been acquired by the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, and are available for research at The Paul Sacher Archive and Research Center for the Music of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.

His personal 70-year collection of research publications have been donated to the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou. In November 2018 the conservatory opened the Chou Wen-chung Music Research Center to house this prestigious collection of more than 1,500 tomes. The new center will serve as a platform to support emerging composers through international conferences and other research-related programs.

Board of Directors

Founder

Chou Wen-chung: (Director) 1978–2019

Columbia University Board of Managers

Michael I. Sovern: (University President) 1983-1993
George Rupp: (University President) 1993-2002
Lee Bollinger: (University President) 2002-2018
Robert Goldberger: (University Provost) 1983-198
Jonathan R. Cole: (University Provost) 1989-2003
Alan Brinkley: (University Provost) 2003-2009
Claude Steel: (University Provost) 2009-2011
John Coatsworth: (University Provost) 2011-2018
Schuyler G. Chapin: (Dean, School of the Arts) 1983-1987
Peter Smith: (Dean, School of the Arts) 1987-1995

Advisory Council

The Center for US-China Arts Exchange established its first Advisory Council in 1981 and benefitted from the guidance of professionals in the arts, academia, business and international cultural exchange. The membership revolved throughout the years and included the following representatives of the arts world:

Leonard Bernstein: (Conductor)
Milos Forman: (Film director)
Ming Cho Lee: (Set designer)
Cho-Liang Lin: (Violinist)
Yo-Yo Ma: (Cellist)
Arthur Miller: (Playwright)
I.M Pei: (Architect)
Isaac Stern: (Violinist)
Audrey Topping: (Author and photographer)
Herman Wouk: (Author)
Yang Chen-ning: (Nobel-prize winning physicist)

Programs

The Center’s program supported specialists in all the performing, visual and literary arts. At the time of establishment, three programmatic categories were announced: exchanges of materials, exchanges of specialists and clearinghouse services.

Exchanges of Materials

During China’s thirty years of isolation from the west, and more intensively during the Cultural Revolution, both western art forms and traditional Chinese genres were restricted or banned. Many libraries, publications and artifacts were destroyed. To address this need for arts materials, the Center sought donations from museums, music and art publishers and corporations, and carried music scores, recordings, art publications and literature to conservatories and arts academies. Chinese institutions provided the Center with publications about recent developments in China’s arts world and the Center assembled these into a resource library on contemporary arts in China.

Exchanges of Specialists

The core of the Center’s program was arranging for qualified professional practioners in the arts, teachers, research scholars, students, and arts administrators to take part in long and short-term programs. Visitors typically offered lectures and master classes, held discussions with teachers and students, and visited local cultural institutions to enhance their knowledge about recent trends in the host country.

Clearinghouse Services

The Center provided free consultation and information to the Ministry of Culture and other arts organizations in China, as well as to American individuals and organizations organizing self-funded programs in China on their own.

Early Programs for Master Artists

In 1979, China’s sudden accessibility to American visitors sparked enormous enthusiasm in the arts world. Once the opening of the Center was announced, the office was inundated with requests from both the general public as well as from many of the nation’s most distinguished artists and cultural luminaries who were eager to be among the first to go. Few people were able to make arrangements on their own and the Center was the “go-to” place for expertise in the arts of China.

During the first few years of operation, the Center accommodated many requests from “big name” artists who were received in China with great excitement. In 1979, violinist Isaac Stern made a performing tour across China with pianist David Golub and the Center assisted in the production of the award-winning documentary “From Mao to Mozart.” Arthur Miller directed the first Chinese-language production of “Death of a Salesman” with the Beijing Peoples’ Arts Theater; opera stars Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti performed in China for vast audiences of a size unfathomable at opera performances in the United States. George White of the O’Neill Center directed Chinese-language productions of Broadway hits “Music Man” and “The Fantasticks” the legendary ballet works of George Balanchine, “Serenade” and “La Valse, ” were performed by the Central Ballet in Beijing for the first time. These performances and productions reached massive audiences in China and ignited a spirit of goodwill and hope that had been in short supply for many years. The Chinese people saw that America was their friend again.

To accommodate large numbers, the Center organized “delegations” which could accommodate twenty-five visitors at a time. Prominent figures in the arts world, although not accustomed to travelling on group tours, made the adjustment and signed up. Early visitors included Lincoln Center Chairman Martin Segal, choreographers Anna Sokolow and Alwin Nikolais, literary artist and critic Susan Sontag, sculptor George Segal, writers Hortense Calisher and Herman Wouk, and set designer Ming Cho Lee. Visitors from China were of an equally high status, although their names were new to most Americans: playwright Cao Yu, actor Ying Ruocheng, writer Ding Ling, qin master Wu Wenguang, costume designer Li Keyu, composers Chen Gang and Mao Yuan, and conductor Chen Xieyang were among to first batch for which the Center created programs.

Programming for the Future

The Center’s ultimate goal and priority was to initiate long-term and ongoing programs of greater depth which would have significant results in both China and the U.S. These projects were on the docket in the early days of operations.

Several of the ongoing programs are outlined below:

Arts Education East and West

In 1980 Vice Minister of Culture Lin Mohan led a Music and Art Delegation to the U.S. which made the crucial contacts needed to launch a ten-year arts exchange program in arts education which sent numerous teams of art teachers and scholars in both directions. On-site experience was combined with an extensive research project supervised by educational psychologist Howard Gardner and Harvard’s Project Zero research lab on creativity and leadership. The program led to new research topics among scholars in the United States as well as the creation by the Chinese government of a cabinet-level State Sub-Commission on Arts Education.

Music Mends the Rift

The rapprochement between the governments of the United States and China did nothing to diminish the bitter animosity between Taiwan and mainland China; artists also bore long-engrained rancor and suspicion of their counterparts across the Taiwan Straits. To address this rift in the music world for the first time, the Center convened a ground-breaking conference at Columbia University in 1988 which brought together composers from both Taiwan and mainland China, together with composers and music scholars from New York and other parts of the U.S. Ending almost forty years of estrangement, ten composers from mainland China and ten composer from Taiwan discussed issues of mutual interest and concern around the topic of “Tradition and the Future of Chinese Music.”

Pacific Music Festival

In 1990 the Center organized the ground-breaking Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. The first event to bring together young musicians and composers from the Pacific rim, the event centered around a youth orchestra of musicians chosen from all of the countries of Asia with the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein at the podium. The Center’s 1988 composers’ conference provided the groundwork to organize a series of workshops for emerging Asian composers. These events were moderated by Chou Wen-chung himself and other seasoned composers from the region.

Beyond the Urban Centers

In its second decade of programming, the Center expanded its scope beyond the arts institutions of urban centers to include folk genres in rural areas. The new program of cultural conservation focused on the indigenous people of China’s southwestern province of Yunnan which is home to twenty-five ethnic minority groups. (In China, this term is translated into English as “minority nationalities.”)

The projects mobilized thousands of Yunnan’s cultural workers creating in crafts and traditional forms as well as provincial scholars of anthropology and other fields. Specialists from Yunnan conducted research in the United States by observing a wide range of approaches and styles in conservation, education and presentation. They visited institutions dedicated to the culture and arts of diverse minority groups in the United States, including Native Americans, Latinos and African Americans as well as leading museums of art, design and natural history in urban areas.American specialists in the fields of museum administration, arts education, archival management , anthropology, archaeology and ethnography visited Yunnan to learn about the cultural realities in China and to share information on existing best practice in the United States.

The efforts of the first five years (1990-1995) resulted in the establishment of a new ethnography museum in Kunming, called the Yunnan Nationalities Museum, representing all of the indigenous ethnic groups in the province; the creation of the first indigenous arts department, teaching music, dance and visual arts, at the Yunnan Nationalities University; mentorship programs in rural areas whereby masters of art forms passing on living traditions to young artists; and a research group of young scholars which had the impact of creating a “Center for the Studies of the Arts of Minority Nationalities” in the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

The initial experience brought to light that the component of nature, which is intrinsic in the artistic and cultural expression of indigenous people, needed more attention. Environmental preservation was then added to that of cultural conservation. Representatives from American environmental agencies and institutions such as the Field Museum in Chicago and The School of the Arts of the Art Institute of Chicago worked in tandem with Chinese ecologists, ornithologists, amphibian specialists and fungi experts of agencies including the Gaoligongshan Nature Reserve, Yunnan’s Southwest Forestry College and the Kunming Institute of Zoology to spearhead ground-breaking projects where both the environment and cultural lifestyle were jeopardized by modern developments. The projects focused on the regions of Weishan City and Valley and Gaoligongshan. All projects were continued under the sole direction of the participants in Yunnan.

References

Books

Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Gardner,Howard, To Open Minds: Chinese Clues to the Dilemma of Contemporary Education New York, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1989.
Jeffri, Joan and Yu Ding, Respect for Art: Visual Arts Administration and Management in China and the United States China, Intellectual Property Publishing House, 2007.
Miller, Arthur, Salesman in Beijing New York,The Viking Press, 1984.
Morath, Inge, Chinese Encounters New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984.
Lai, Eric C. The Music of Chou Wen-chung Oxfordshire, Ashgate Publishing, 2009.
Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer New York,The Berkley Publishing Group, 2003.
Chou Kwong-chung, Oliver, Performing for the People: A History of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra in the PRC 1956-1996.
Jindong Cai and Sheila Melvin, Beethoven in China Australia, Penguin Group, 2015.
Chang, Peter M., Chou Wen-chung: The Life and Work of a Contemporary Chinese-Born American Composer Lanham, MD. Scarecrow Press, 2006.
Arlin, Mary I and Mark Radice, editors, Polycultural Synthesis in the Music of Chou Wen-chung New York. Routledge, 2018.
Liang, Lei, editor. Confluence: Chou Wen-chung’s Writings on Music Shanghai. Shanghai Conservatory of Music Publishing, 2014.

External links