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1.5 hour lectures generally offered in the early evening covering a range of topics on (Chinese) history, art, culture and society.
Annual Lecture on World Cultural Heritage
Arts & Culture is pleased to announce its second annual lecture on world cultural heritage with the Global Heritage Fund. Since its founding, GHF has focused its efforts in developing countries and regions on preservation and responsible development of the most important and endangered global heritage sites. GHF projects are selected using strict criteria developed by its Board of Trustees and Senior Advisory Board, and work on each project follows a methodology termed Preservation by Design®. Jeff Morgan, Executive Director of GHF, and Kuang-Han Li, GHF’s China Project Manager, will speak about GHF’s projects in China, including the Foguang Temple, Lijiang ancient town, the tulous in Fujian province, and the city of Pingyao in Shanxi.
Jeff Morgan is a trained urban and regional planner; at GHF, he is responsible for global conservation excellence, building a leading international conservancy, and improving the lives in communities where GHF sites are located. He is a co-author of Cracking the Japanese Market: Keys to Success in the New Global Economy (Free Press, 1991) and Saving Our Global Heritage (GHF Press, 2004). He serves on the Advisory Board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and GHF’s Board of Trustees and Senior Advisory Board.
Tuesday, May 1 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Book Signing
Site and Sound: The Architecture and Acoustics of New Opera Houses and Concert Halls
In the last two decades, China has seen the greatest period of urban growth in human history. The construction boom in its cities includes the creation of many lavish new concert halls. But with great ambitions come growing pains; show-stopping designs and massive lobbies are at times met with shortcomings in acoustics and inconsistent building standards.
Noted architectural historian Victoria Newhouse toured China’s “grand theaters” as she researched her forthcoming book, Site and Sound: The Architecture and Acoustics of New Opera Houses and Concert Halls, in which she devotes a chapter to the unprecedented proliferation of multi-hall grand theaters in the People’s Republic of China. Along with the halls themselves, she critiques the cultural context and ideas behind these surprisingly idiosyncratic representatives of regional political power.
In conversation with Ken Smith, Asian performing arts critic of the Financial Times, Newhouse evaluates her accumulated evidence and the variety of opinions and studies about what lays in store for music and performance, and comes to surprising and optimistic projections of a vibrant future awaiting sites for sound.
Thursday, May 3 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Book Signing
Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts
Edited by Jeffrey W. Cody, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin
In the early twentieth century, Chinese traditional architecture and the French-derived methods of the École des Beaux-Arts converged in the United States when Chinese students were given scholarships to train as architects at American universities whose design curricula were dominated by Beaux-Arts methods. Upon their return home in the 1920s and 1930s, these graduates began to practice architecture and create China’s first architectural schools, often transferring a version of what they had learned in the U.S. to Chinese situations. The resulting complex series of design-related transplantations had major implications for China between 1911 and 1949, as it simultaneously underwent cataclysmic social, economic, and political changes. After 1949 and the founding of the People’s Republic, China experienced a radically different wave of influence from the Beaux-Arts through advisors from the Soviet Union who, first under Stalin and later Khrushchev, brought Beaux-Arts ideals in the guise of socialist progress.
In the early twenty-first century, China is still feeling the effects of these events. Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts examines the coalescing of the two major architectural systems, placing significant shifts in architectural theory and practice in China within relevant, contemporary, cultural, and educational contexts.
Nancy S. Steinhardt, renowned scholar of Chinese architectural history, is Professor of East Asian art and Curator of Chinese art at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tuesday, May 15 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
For more information on classes, programs and events, please email , or call 212-744-8181 ext. 111.
Beer Tasting Series
Archaeology of Beers: Tastings of Ancient Ales
This two-part series will be jointly hosted by Dogfish Head Brewery’s founder and president Sam Calagione, Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Agnes Hsu, China Institute’s Resident Scholar and Consulting Archaeologist to UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Since 1999, Calagione has worked closely with McGovern, a leading molecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, to bring ancient brewing history back to life. The first beer they created together was Midas Touch, based on molecular evidence found in a tomb in Turkey believed to have belonged to the legendary King Midas of Greek mythology. The second ancient ale was Chateau Jiahu, based on an ingredient list unearthed from a 9000-year-old Chinese burial. This recipe is the earliest evidence of fermented beverage in the history of civilization—proving that drinks made from fermented grains (beer) have a longer history than beverages made from fermented grapes (wine). Chateau Jiahu was awarded the Specialty Beer Gold Medal at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival. Their third creation, Theobroma (“Food of the Gods” in the Aztec language), is based on the chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras that showed evidence of the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions. Tastings of this ancient trio will be complemented by other exotic and seasonal ales that have become signatures of Dogfish Head’s craft brew masters.
Part I of the series will be hosted by Sam Calagione, Founder and President of Dogfish Head Brewery, who is also starring in Brewed, a Discovery Channel series about the fascinating history of beer making. Part II will feature an in-depth talk by Dr. Patrick McGovern, Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology. He is the author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (2003) and Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (2009), as well as over 100 periodical articles.
*Please note that attendees must meet the legal drinking age requirement of the State of New York.
First tasting on Thursday, October 7 ~ 6:30-8:30 PM
Second tasting on Friday, December 17 ~ 6-8 PM
$45 member/ $55 non-member (both events)
$25 member/ $30 non-member (per event)
Book Signing & Special Symposium
*New date and time. Book signing will be held in conjunction with the Special Symposium: The Legacy of C.C. Wang.
Through a Chinese Connoisseur’s Eye: Private Notes of C.C. Wang
C.C. Wang’s collection of private notes was written over a 40 year period, on paintings in the Palace Museum in Taipei and other collections he has studied. These detailed annotations open the door to the inner thoughts of a formidable collector, demonstrating his expertise and thought process as a connoisseur of Chinese literati painting. Included are paintings now housed in museums from his own collection, with the provenance and background of the nineteenth and twentieth century Chinese collections.
Kathleen Yang was first introduced to C.C. Wang in 1962 by her mother, when he was asked to make an authoritative evaluation of three paintings belonging to the family. For three years, she consulted Wang weekly to ensure accuracy in the translation of his comments from Chinese to English for the publication of his private notes. Yang, a graduate of Harvard University, studied with C.C. Wang for many decades to understand the traditional connoisseurship of Chinese classical painting, a system that has existed for many centuries in China, where one’s knowledge is transmitted from mentor to mentee.
Special Symposium on the Legacy of C.C. Wang
In celebration of the publication of Through a Chinese Connoisseur’s Eye: Private Notes of C.C. Wang, three distinguished panelists will speak about Wang’s connoisseurship, their experience working with him, and his noted collection of Chinese paintings. Speakers include Jerome Silbergeld, P. Y. & Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History at Princeton University, David Sensabaugh, Curator of Asian Art and Head of the Department of Asian Art at the Yale University Art Gallery, and Arnold Chang, renowned artist and art historian who studied under C.C. Wang.
Followed by a light reception.
Saturday, October 22 ~ 1 – 4:30 PM
$20 member / $25 non-member
SOLD OUT
Book Signing
Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia: The Eclectic Architecture of Sojourners and Settlers
The multiple Chinese migrations from southeastern China to Southeast Asia have had important implications for both regions. In Southeast Asia this influence can be seen in the architecturally eclectic homes these migrants and their descendants built as they became successful; homes that combined Chinese, European, and local influences, especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia strives not only to be an informative but also an authoritative book on the subject of hybrid architecture — filled with stunning color photographs and essays on nearly thirty well- preserved homes.
Ronald G. Knapp is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and author or contributing editor of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a Nation.
Tuesday, October 25 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Curator’s Lecture
Kuiyi Shen and Julia Andrews, guest co-curators of the exhibition, will speak about their work on Blooming in the Shadows: Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974–1985. Kuiyi Shen is Director of Chinese Studies Program and Professor of Asian Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the University of California, San Diego. His teaching and writings have focused on Chinese and Japanese art with an emphasis on modern and contemporary Chinese art and Sino-Japanese art exchanges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Julia Andrews is Professor of Art History at the Ohio State University and a specialist in Chinese painting and modern Chinese art. Her first book, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China (1994), won the Joseph Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies for the best book of the year on modern China.
Thursday, September 15 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Islam in China:
A Talk on Rectifying God’s Name
Islam first arrived in China over 1,200 years ago, but for more than a millennium it was perceived as a foreign presence. The restoration of native Chinese rule by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), after nearly a century of Mongol domination, helped transform Chinese intellectual discourse on ideological, social, political, religious, and ethnic identity. This led to the creation of a burgeoning network of Sinicized Muslim scholars who wrote about Islam in classical Chinese and developed a body of literature known as the Han Kitāb. Rectifying God’s Name examines the life and work of one of the most important of the Qing Chinese Muslim literati, Liu Zhi (ca. 1660–ca. 1730), and places his writings in their historical, cultural, social, and religio-philosophical contexts. His Tianfang dianli (Ritual law of Islam) represents the most systematic and sophisticated attempt within the Han Kitāb corpus to harmonize Islam with Chinese thought.
The volume begins by situating Liu Zhi in the historical development of the Chinese Muslim intellectual tradition, examining his sources and influences as well as his legacy. Delving into the contents of Liu Zhi’s work, it focuses on his use of specific Chinese terms and concepts, their origins and meanings in Chinese thought, and their correspondence to Islamic principles. A close examination of the Tianfang dianli reveals Liu Zhi’s specific usage of the concept of Ritual as a common foundation of both Confucian morality and social order and Islamic piety.
James D. Frankel is assistant professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Hawaii.
Tuesday, June 21 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Book Signing
Confucianism for Americans
Published by the University of California Press and Acumen, Confucianism is the newest addition to their Ancient Philosophies series, which presents a concise, balanced overview of China’s oldest and most revered philosophy. In clear, straightforward language, Paul R. Goldin explores how Confucianism was conceived and molded by its earliest masters, discusses its main tenets, and considers its history and relevance for the modern world. Goldin guides readers through the philosophies of the three major classical Confucians—Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi—as well as two short anonymous treatises, the Great Learning and the Classic of Filial Piety. He also discusses some of the main Neo-Confucian philosophers and outlines transformations Confucianism has undergone in the past century.
Paul R. Goldin is Professor and Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tuesday, June 7 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Exclusive Advance Release
The Empress and Mrs. Conger: The Uncommon Friendship of Two Women and Two Worlds
In anticipation of the centennial of the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China Institute is hosting an exclusive talk and pre-publication book signing of The Empress and Mrs. Conger by noted biographer, Grant Hayter-Menzies.
The Empress and Mrs. Conger traces the parallel lives of Empress Dowager Cixi and the wife of an American ambassador, Sarah Pike Conger, which converged to alter their perspectives of each other and each other’s worlds: Mrs. Conger’s love for China through her efforts to befriend, learn from, and help Chinese women; the Dowager’s appreciation, through Mrs. Conger, of the need for reform and the usefulness of cooperation with the West for the good of China. Using unpublished letters, diaries and photographs, and benefiting from the cooperation and assistance of relatives of Sarah Conger and the Empress Dowager, The Empress and Mrs. Conger recreates a world of the past while celebrating a friendship between East and West for the present and future to aspire to.
Before turning to biography full time, Grant Hayter-Menzies served as art and music critic for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of several books including the first biography of Chinese-American author and personality Princess Der Ling, published by Hong Kong University Press in 2008.
Tuesday, May 10 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Performing Arts
China Moves
Spatial, aural, and kinetic forces intercept and diverge in China Moves, a collaboration between choreographer Michael Mao and composer Huang Ruo. Inspired by Huang’s Drama Theater No. 2: Shifting Shades, a composition for piano, cello, percussion, and eighteen beer bottles, China Moves explores artistic and compositional challenges in dance and music today. China Moves will premiere during the New York City Immigrant Heritage Week in April 2011 and China Institute is proud to host an exclusive mini performance in the intimate setting of its classical Chinese Garden.
Michael Mao is founder of Michael Mao Dance, a critically acclaimed New York based modern dance company with an international corps of accomplished dancers. His works fill the stage with compelling images and enthrall audiences with their emotional immediacy. Rooted in the traditions of American modern dance, Mao’s works reveal the choreographer’s Asian heritage in their spare yet expansive choreographic means. Huang Ruo was awarded First Place by the prestigious Luxembourg International Composition Prize in 2008 and has been cited by the New Yorker as “one of the most intriguing of the new crop of Asian-American composers.”
Friday, April 29 ~ 6 – 7:30 PM
$15 member / $20 non-member
Director’s Talk and U.S. Premiere of The Giant Buddha at Leshan
The newest addition to the popular Manmade Marvels series on the Discovery Channel, this episode goes deep into the heart of China’s Sichuan province in search of the largest stone sculpture in the world. Award-winning documentary producer and director, Steve Talley, will introduce the film and speak about his experience filming archaeological sites in China and throughout the world. Resident Scholar Dr. Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu, a consulting archaeologist to UNESCO who appears in the film, will also join the discussion.
Tuesday, March 22 ~ 6:30–8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Special Lecture
Restoring Emperor Qianlong’s Juanqinzhai
In conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s special exhibition The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, organizers of the exhibition – Dr. Nancy Berliner , Curator of Chinese Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, and Henry Ng, Executive Vice President of the World Monuments Fund, will speak about their multi-year collaboration with the Palace Museum on restoring the Juanqinzhai (Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service) that was the private retreat of Emperor Qianlong (1735-1799) of the Qing Dynasty.
Friday, March 18, 2011 ~ 5 – 6 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
FREE FOTG member
Lecture
Bronze Age Cultures in the North
Dr. Li Feng, Associate Director of Center for Archaeology and Assistant Professor of Early Chinese Cultural History, Columbia University, is a leading specialist of China’s Bronze Age. Dr. Li will discuss the traditional bronze cultures in the Central Plain region and cross-regional communications.
Tuesday, March 15 ~ 6:30-8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Lecture
The Axial Age — How Philosophy and Medicine Began
Dr. Geoffrey Redmond, M.D., Center for Health Research, will introduce the ancient text Yijing (Book of Changes) and manuscripts from the Yangzi River region that formed the basis of Chiense thought and medicine. The audience is invited to participate in an educational demo of the Yijing.
Tuesday, March 8 ~ 6:30-8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Lecture
Bronze Age Cultures in the South
Dr. John Major, Senior Lectuer at China Institute and a former professor, at Dartmouth College, will speak about thte cultures that flourished along the Yangzi River during the Bronze Age and his recent publication The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China
Tuesday, March 1 ~ 6:30-8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Curator’s Lecture
Ancient Bronzes in Hunan: A Survey
The middle bank of the Yangzi River is one of the most significant cradles of Chinese civilization and a historical area for the study of China’s Bronze Age. Several important excavations in the past few decades have enabled us to examine the little known aspects of this culture through exquisite bronze vessels. Guest co-curator, Dr. Jay Xu, will speak about the fascinating story of this regional culture in three ways: the development and characteristics of Hunan bronzes, their function and patronage, and their cultural connection to central China.
Along the Yangzi River: Regional Culture of the Bronze Age from Hunan is an original exhibition organized by China Institute Gallery in collaboration with the Hunan Provincial Museum.
Dr. Jay Xu is a widely published scholar, particularly on ancient Chinese bronzes and archaeology—his area of expertise. His prolific writings or translations cover diverse areas, including ancient Chinese jades, Chinese ceramics, Chinese calligraphy, and museum practice. The book Art of the Houma Foundry (Princeton University Press, 1996), to which he contributed, was awarded the prestigious Shimada Prize of 1997 for the Outstanding Publication on the History of Eastern Asian art. His publications have appeared in books and in such journals as Orientations, Natural History, Artibus Asiae, and Journal of East Asian Archaeology. He is much in demand as a speaker on topics related to Chinese art or museum practice, circumnavigating the globe from numerous cities across the United States to mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea.
Monday, February 28 ~ 6:30–8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Lecture
The Original I Ching: An Authentic Translation of the Book of Changes
First among the ancient classics, the I Ching or Book of Changes is one of the world’s most influential books, comparable to the Bible, the Koran, and the Upanishads. The I Ching’s purpose is universal: to provide good counsel to its users in making decisions during times of change. Since its origins about 3,000 years ago, it has become a compendium of wisdom used by people of many cultures and eras.
This groundbreaking new translation by Dr. Margaret Pearson is based on the text created during the first centuries of the Zhou dynasty, study of documents showing how it was used in the dynasty, and on recent archaeological research findings. Her translation clearly separates the core text (Zhouyi) from later commentaries’ anachronisms, revealing a text rich in natural images and relatively free of gender stereotypes and cosmic concepts.
Margaret J. Pearson is professor emerita in history at Skidmore College, where she taught for thirty years. She is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and a frequent researcher at the Needham Research Institute, also in Cambridge. She has directed the Asian Studies Program and chaired the History Department and the University Seminar on Traditional China at Columbia University. Dr. Pearson is the first woman scholar to complete a translation of the oldest Chinese classic, the Book of Changes.
Tuesday, March 6 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Lecture
The Cultural Revolution Cookbook
Approximately 17 million privileged city youths were “sent down” to the countryside to learn from the peasants during China’s chaotic Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Toil in the communes was arduous and unpleasant and food was seldom abundant, but like the local farmers, they endeavored to make do with what there was. They learned to prepare remarkably tasty and healthy dishes with the fresh, wholesome, locally grown foods in season, to conserve scarce fuel and to improvise when ingredients were unavailable.
These are their recipes—entirely authentic, and easy to prepare in an American kitchen. Many are vegetarian and don’t require exotic ingredients. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow, and short cuts and substitutions are listed. There are also many stories—about Chinese food, about the Cultural Revolution, and about living in the countryside—that bring the recipes, and the era, to life!
Sasha Gong earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees in history at Peking University and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University and has held teaching posts at UCLA, George Washington University, and George Mason University. She is the author of Born American: A Chinese Woman’s Dream of Liberty. Scott D. Seligman is a writer, historian, retired corporate executive, and a career “China hand.” He has a B.A. degree in history from Princeton University and an M.A. degree from Harvard University, and is the author of several books on China.
Tuesday, March 13 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
ASIA WEEK 2012 EVENT
Book Signing
Things Chinese: Antiques, Crafts, Collectibles
A source of fascination to the West, China’s renowned art objects and traditional manufactured products have long been sought by collectors. Things Chinese presents sixty distinctive items that are typical of Chinese culture and together present a window onto the people, the history, and the society of the world’s largest nation.
Featuring descriptions and full-color photographs, the history, cultural significance, and customs surrounding these objects and their importance becomes clear. Items covered include bamboo furniture, ivory carving, snuff bottles, mooncake molds, musical instruments, mahjong sets, and fengshui compasses.
Ronald G. Knapp is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and author or contributing editor of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a Nation.
Tuesday, March 20 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member
Paul Chih Meng Memorial Lecture
CHINA BOYS: How U.S. Relations with the PRC Began and Grew-A Personal Memoir by Ambassador Nicholas Platt
In this highly acclaimed memoir, diplomat Nicholas Platt describes preparations for the historic Nixon visit to China in 1972 and the interplay within the U.S. delegation during the visit itself. He recounts setting up America’s first resident diplomatic office in the PRC, headed by David Bruce, and first encounters between Americans and Chinese, including Olympic athletes, orchestra maestros, Members of Congress, airplane manufacturers, bankers, scientists, and inner city youths. He further reveals the forging of the first links between the Pentagon and the People’s Liberation Army following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and shows how these all these diverse practical ties later evolved into today’s huge and crucial relationship. He also examines the role played by nongovernmental organizations in building U.S.-China relations.
Tuesday, January 17 ~ 6:30 – 8 PM
$10 member / $15 non-member