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| 美中藝術交流中心 | |
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| Founded | October 1, 1978 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Chou Wen-chung |
| Dissolved | 2019 |
| Purpose | Cultural exchange |
| Location | |
Area served | United States, China, Asia |
| Method | Grants, funding, fellowships |
| Owner | Columbia University |
| Website | www |
The Center for US-China Arts Exchange was a private, not-for-profit, national organization with the mission to promote greater understanding and mutual cooperation between the United States and the People's Republic of China through interaction in the arts.
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 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 funded the domestic expenses of many of the programs carried out there. The first U.S.-based organization to sponsor exchanges between the two countries solely in the arts, the Center organized projects designed to create a network of cultural relationships between two countries that had been estranged for thirty years.
Upon its establishment, the center was supported by 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 Cho-Liang Lin, author Herman Wouk and Nobel Prize winning physicist Yang Chen-ning.
American figures in the arts were among those eager to visit China. Violinist Isaac Stern was the first, making a performance tour in 1979 with pianist David Golub. The Center arranged for a film crew to document their trip. The resulting film, "From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China", won an Academy Award. Other prominent figures who made professional visits to China under the center's auspices, were Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Ming Cho Lee, Alwin Nikolais and many others in all the fields of the visual, literary 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. Participants as diverse as architects, museum designers, 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 designer, facilitator and fundraiser, concluding forty years of innovative exchange work. The center's archives have been acquired by Columbia University's C.V. Starr East Asian Library and are available to researchers by appointment.