Chicago, IL—Today, the Terra Foundation for American Art announced its support of two new Fulbright awards to teach American art history in China for five-month periods, at Tsinghua University and Peking University in Beijing. Applications for the Fulbright-Terra Foundation Award in the History of American Art, which will begin in the 2015/2016 academic year, are due August 1, 2014, and can be found at the Fulbright website (http://catalog.cies.org/viewAward.aspx?n=5090&dc=CH).
“In the fall of 2011, our board of directors made a strategic decision to expand our programming in China and throughout Asia, and these awards are just one example of our ongoing organizational commitment to that goal,” explained Terra Foundation President & CEO Elizabeth Glassman. “These lectureships target accomplished, senior US scholars at the associate or full professor level who will help foster the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States.”
In addition to a stipend, each award includes a book fund for the host institution to purchase publications on American art, as well as funding to allow lectures at other universities in China.
According to Dr. Carrie Haslett, Program Director of Exhibition & Academic Programs at the Terra Foundation, “The collaboration with Fulbright complements our work over the past two years to forge new relationships in Asia. For example, last November the foundation sponsored a conference at Tsinghua University examining key exhibitions and museum presentations of American art that have played a pivotal role in shaping an evolving cultural understanding of the United States at home and abroad. This was the inaugural event for the university’s World Art History Institute.”
Also in November, the Terra Foundation participated in the fourth annual U.S.-China Consultation on People-to-People Exchange in Washington, DC. Co-chaired by Secretary of State John Kerry and China’s Vice Premier Liu Yandong, the event resulted in the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries for continued cooperation between cultural institutions, representatives, and scholars.
In 2012 the Terra Foundation-supported exhibition Art Across America, the first major survey of historical art of the United States to take place in South Korea, travelled to the National Museum of Korea and the Daejeon Museum of Art. Later renamed America: Painting a Nation, the exhibition is on view at Australia’s Art Gallery of New South Wales through February 9.
“The success of these partnerships has been very encouraging and has laid the foundation for expanded programming throughout Asia,” added Dr. Haslett.
Upcoming Terra Foundation-supported projects in Asia include the following:
- The symposium Multi-Locale Pops in the 1960s will take place at Tokyo’s Sophia University on March 29. Organized by Hiroko Ikegami, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies of Kobe University, the event will examine the global significance of American Pop Art by bringing together seven prominent postwar art specialists to discuss Pop’s development in Latin America, Asia, New York, and California. Speakers include Thomas Crow, Andrew Perchuk, and Professor Ikegami.
- On May 14, five scholars from Japan, France, and the US will participate in a 90-minute online discussion, considering night-time imagery as a vehicle for both James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) and Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847–1915). Organized by the Freer Gallery of Art, this event will explore common themes of nostalgia for the past and unease about rapid industrialization of the urban landscape, providing an in-depth and original analysis of the cross-cultural interchange between Kiyochika (and other Japanese artists of the Meiji era) and Whistler.
- With support from the Terra Foundation, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Yokohama Museum of Art are co-organizing the first retrospective of the work of James McNeill Whistler to be shown in Japan since 1987. The exhibition, opening in September, and its accompanying scholarly catalogue will introduce the artist’s work to the Japanese public, paying special attention to the myriad mutual connections between Japan and Whistler.
- Lastly, a three-part academic exchange between the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the China Art Academy (CAA), in Hangzhou, China, will examine the complementary histories of twentieth-century modernism in China and the United States. This coming fall, UCSB Professor Bruce Robertson will teach a seminar on modern American art at the China Art Academy. In early spring 2015, Professor Jian Zhang of CAA will teach a seminar on modern Chinese art at UCSB to graduate students working in modern art at UCSB, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, and USC. Selected students of the two seminars will then collaborate—using digital media—to organize an international panel discussion on the subject, which will be held in 2015 in Hangzhou. They will also help edit an online, bilingual publication that will be completed by July 2016.
For more information about the Terra Foundation’s upcoming projects throughout Asia, please visit www.terraamericanart.org/events/event/.
Terra Foundation for American Art
Established in 1978, the Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States. With financial resources of more than $250 million, an exceptional collection of American art from the colonial era to the mid-twentieth century, and an expansive grant program, it is one of the leading foundations focused on American art, and devotes approximately $12 million annually in support of American art exhibitions, projects, and research worldwide.
